Emotions - a timely matter

Fear generalization - and its pathological form, fear overgeneralization - are considered crucial factors in the maintenance of anxiety disorders. Here, we investigated whether fear generalization in adult spider phobic patients might predict treatment response to an extinction-based treatment. 90 patients with spider phobia (SP) completed a One-Session Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET), a clinical and a MEG assessment before and a clinical assessment after therapy. Based on self-reported symptom reductions in the Spider Phobia Questionnaire, patients were categorized as either responders (>30% reduction) or non-responders. The MEG-assessment consisted of baseline, conditioning and subsequent generalization phases. In the conditioning phases aversive unconditioned stimuli (US) were either paired or never paired with differently tilted Gabor gratings (CS+, CS-). In the subsequent generalization phases fear ratings, US expectancy ratings and event-related fields to CS+, CS- and seven different generalization (GS) stimuli that ranged on a perceptual continuum from CS+ to CS- were measured. Non-responders compared to responders showed behavioral overgeneralization indicated by more linear generalization gradients in fear-ratings. Analyses of MEG source estimations revealed that linear generalization gradients in frontal clusters also dissociated (later) non-responders from responders. While stronger (inhibitory) frontal activations to safety-signaling CS- and GS compared to CS+ declined over time in non-responders, responders maintained these activations at early (< 300ms) and late processing stages. Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that behavioral overgeneralization and prefrontal inhibitory learning mechanisms during fear generalization may predict later responses to extinction-based treatments. The temporal dynamics of these mechanisms deserve further attention in future research.

Two EEG experiments are presented investigating processing of and subsequent memory for positive, negative and neutral trait adjectives presented under different task conditions. In experiment 1, participants were presented with adjectives as supposed personality feedback following a self-introduction (condition A) or as stimuli for explicit learning (condition B). One week later, they were asked back into the laboratory and received a surprise recognition memory test. In experiment 2, a new sample was presented with the same stimuli as in experiment 1, but for judgement of self-descriptiveness (condition A) or concreteness (condition B). Again, a surprise recognition memory test occurred one week later. Overall, discrimination accuracy was best when words were presented as supposed personality feedback following a socially relevant situation (experiment 1 - condition A). This held both in comparison to the explicit learning condition in experiment 1 and both conditions in experiment 2. Moreover, particularly in experiment 1, memory was biased towards positive words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during the encoding session of experiment 1 revealed a larger late positive potential (LPP: 400-700 ms) for words presented as personality feedback (condition A), the effect being largest for positive feedback. In experiment 2, the LPP was larger during self-descriptiveness judgement (condition A) than in the concreteness judgement (condition B) with no difference between contents. Together, the data reveal how social relevance modulates perception of and memory for emotional stimuli at distinct processing stages attesting to the tight relationship of emotional and social processes in humans.

Since news spreads rapidly and reaches millions, the ability to distinguish between credible and less credible media sources may be more crucial than ever. Yet, recent behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests that social judgments are primarily based on emotional contents of headlines independent of source credibility. Here we investigate influences of emotional headlines and source credibility on pupil size as a measure of exerted cognitive effort, and on behavioral measures of confidence related to social judgments. Thirty participants read headlines about the social behavior of depicted unfamiliar persons from websites of well-known German news media that are perceived as credible or less credible. Persons paired with emotional headlines were judged more negative or positive than persons associated with neutral headlines, and emotional judgments were faster and made with more confidence than neutral judgments. None of these effects was modulated by source credibility. Pupil dilation during social judgments was reduced for emotional relative to neutral judgments, and less credible sources were associated with larger pupil dilatation relative to credible sources only in response to neutral headlines. These findings complement recent electrophysiological evidence in demonstrating a dominant influence of emotional contents of headlines independent of source credibility. They also shed light on a potential mechanism. Cognitive resources to evaluate the credibility of news may primarily be allocated to neutral, but not to emotional contents.

Many theories describe how we learn limb movements. It is much less investigated if and how we learn to move facial muscles. We present here two new paradigms to investigate facial learning. In experiment 1, the mobility of the face was impaired by application of kinesio-tape to the corner of the mouth. In the treatment group, tape was applied with a downward pull, in the sham group without pull. Participants had to read aloud for 25 minutes to adapt to the reduced mobility. Resting-state fMRI recorded before and after reading demonstrated plastic changes in a network including striatal-, cerebellar- and somatosensory brain areas. However, in contrast to long-term learning, we did not find involvement of the cerebral motor cortex. In experiment 2, we used Botulinumtoxin A (BTX) to reduce the mobility of the face. Due to the paralytic effect of BTX, we assumed that faces of participants would be rated more negatively if presented dynamically (videos) compared to statically (photos). Our hypothesis was not confirmed. Participants were rated more positively especially in response to videos with neutral facial expression. The results suggest that participants were able to adapt to the reduced mobility. Taken together, our results stress the plastic abilities of the face and the underlying neural architecture. They seem to operate as fast as it was shown for limb movements.