Article
Behavioral Sciences
Jinbo Zhang, Xiang He, Werner Sommer, Zhenzhu Yue
Summary: This study used ERP technique to investigate the role of eye gaze in attentional orienting, and found that emotional congruency modulates the gaze cuing effect, especially when targets are indicated by faces with negative expressions.
COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Virginia Carter Leno, Hannah Pickard, Liliana Cybulska, Tim Smith, Marcus Munafo, Ian Penton-Voak, Emily Simonoff, Andrew Pickles, Rachael Bedford
Summary: This study examined the relationship between autism and callous-unemotional (CU) traits and emotion recognition difficulties. It found that autism traits were associated with decreased emotion recognition in the cued condition, while CU traits were associated with decreased emotion recognition in the uncued condition but better fear recognition when cued to the eyes. The results suggest that interventions promoting eye gaze may benefit children with CU traits, but not those with autistic characteristics.
JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Tian Yuan, Haoyue Ji, Li Wang, Yi Jiang
Summary: This study investigated the modulation effect of emotional content on attentional orienting triggered by social cues. The findings showed that happy biological motion significantly enhanced attentional orienting effect, while sad biological motion did not. Furthermore, this modulation effect was also observed in social attention induced by gaze. The results highlight the important role of emotional information in modulating the processing of social signals.
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Aleya Flechsenhar, Seth Levine, Katja Bertsch
Summary: This study found that under threat conditions, there are differences in perceiving emotional facial expressions, with slower response times and lower accuracy. There is also a more negative perception of neutral and positive information. Eye movements are initiated later and there are more frequent fixation changes and shorter dwell times under threat.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Roxana Pittig, Robrecht P. R. D. van der Wel, Timothy N. Welsh, Anne Boeckler
Summary: Gaze direction and emotion expression are important facial features that affect social interactions. This study found that people pay more attention to direct gaze, and the attentional processing of direct gaze is modulated by facial emotion expressions. Angry facial expressions enhance the direct gaze effect, while fearful facial expressions reduce it. Happy and disgusted facial expressions do not modulate the direct gaze effect.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Lycia D. de Voogd, Eline Hagenberg, Ying Joey Zhou, Floris P. de Lange, Karin Roelofs
Summary: In threatening situations, individuals may rely more on bottom-up sensory processing rather than prior expectations to make perceptual decisions. Changes in heart rate may contribute to increased perceptual sensitivity.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Alma-Sophia Merscher, Matthias Gamer
Summary: Rapidly detecting and processing relevant information in the environment is crucial for survival. Human eyes are naturally drawn to social or threatening stimuli as they provide important information for appropriate behavior. Recent studies have shown a centralization of gaze, resembling freezing behaviors in rodents, which predicts the speed of motor actions.
Article
Psychiatry
Jari Perakyla, Kaija Jarventausta, Piia Haapaniemi, Joan A. Camprodon, Kaisa M. Hartikainen
Summary: This study assessed executive functions in patients with major depressive disorder before and after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), finding significant improvement in depression and executive functions post-ECT. Novel indices derived from threat modulation of executive function and working memory show promise as objective biomarkers of depression severity pre-ECT and cognitive outcome post-ECT.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHIATRY
(2021)
Article
Neuroimaging
Willeke Martine Menks, Lynn Valerie Fehlbaum, Reka Borbas, Philipp Sterzer, Christina Stadler, Nora Maria Raschle
Summary: The study found that adolescents with CD exhibited neural deficits during emotional face processing, specifically in the right anterior insula. In-scanner eye-tracking data revealed that these adolescents spent significantly less time on the eye region, potentially contributing to the observed deficits in emotion processing.
NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Lilja Kristin Jonsdottir, Janina Neufeld, Terje Falck-Ytter, Johan Lundin Kleberg
Summary: Studies have shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tend to avert their gaze from both eyes and mouths. This attentional avoidance is not specific to eyes and is not related to anxiety symptoms.
JOURNAL OF AUTISM AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS
(2023)
Article
Psychiatry
Pablo Navalon, Manuel Perea, Pilar Benavent, Pilar Sierra, Alberto Dominguez, Carmen Iranzo, Elena Serrano-Lozano, Belen Almansa, Ana Garcia-Blanco
Summary: The study found that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit longer gaze duration and higher percentage of total fixations and total duration towards threatening scenes compared to non-social ones. This indicates an attentional bias towards threatening scenes in terms of attentional maintenance and engagement, but not in initial orienting.
JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Suzanne L. Macari, Angelina Vernetti, Katarzyna Chawarska
Summary: Differential emotional reactivity to social and nonsocial threats was examined in toddlers with ASD and typically developing toddlers. Toddlers with ASD showed elevated distress but lower attention to social threats, while they exhibited lower distress in response to nonsocial and ambiguous threats. The study suggests that early atypical emotional reactivity may independently contribute to shaping complex autism phenotypes.
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Claire F. Noonan, Brianna K. Hunter, Julie Markant
Summary: The study found that infants pay more attention to the eyes in messages with negative affect, but this increased attention does not directly facilitate gaze cueing. Infants only showed reliable gaze cueing after messages with positive and neutral affect. Additionally, gender differences were observed in infants' attention to internal face features and subsequent gaze cueing responses.
INFANT BEHAVIOR & DEVELOPMENT
(2021)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Ruben Andreas Bressler, Sophie Raible, Michael Luehrs, Ralph Tier, Rainer Goebel, David E. Linden
Summary: The study focused on training Dutch police recruits in the Special Forces using real-time fMRI neurofeedback to regulate their emotions in high-stress situations. The training resulted in successful downregulation of brain activity, but no significant differences were found between the neurofeedback group and the control group in behavioral tasks.
Article
Neurosciences
Peter A. Kirk, Avram J. Holmes, Oliver J. Robinson
Summary: Previous research has suggested a link between the amygdala-dorsomedial prefrontal circuit, trait anxiety/vigilance, and anxiogenic stimuli. This study aimed to investigate if this circuit is chronically engaged in individuals with high anxiety and threat vigilance. While no evidence of this relationship was found in the analysis of resting-state fMRI data, a relationship was observed between threat vigilance behavior and intrinsic amygdala-periaqueductal gray connectivity in exploratory analyses.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Jose Sanchez-Bornot, Roberto C. Sotero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Ozguer Simsek, Damien Coyle
Summary: This study proposes a multi-penalized state-space model for analyzing unobserved dynamics, using a data-driven regularization method. Novel algorithms are developed to solve the model, and a cross-validation method is introduced to evaluate regularization parameters. The effectiveness of this method is validated through simulations and real data analysis, enabling a more accurate exploration of cognitive brain functions.
