ADHD and anxiety frequently occur together; however, the cognitive outcomes of co-morbid anxiety and ADHD are not straightforward. A potential explanation for conflicting results in the literature may be that different core ADHD symptoms show different interactions with anxiety depending on the task processing demands. To address this question, we investigated whether different ADHD traits are related to different inhibitory outcomes, contingent upon the level of trait anxiety. The sample consists of 60 non-clinical university students (X ̅age= 20.5, 53% male). Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scale (CAARS-SL) and State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were used to measure ADHD-traits and anxiety, respectively. The participants completed a visual Go/NoGo task with and without distractor conditions while continuous EEG was recorded. Inhibitory control was operationalized as the frontocentral N2 maximum peak amplitude elicited in response inhibition (NoGo/No Distractor), cognitive inhibition (Go/Distractor), dual inhibition (NoGo/Distractor), and control (Go/No Distractor) conditions. We analyzed the moderating effect of trait anxiety on the prediction of inhibitory control by ADHD scores for each Go/NoGo condition with the varying inhibition demands. Results showed that trait anxiety moderated the effects of total ADHD and hyperactivity-impulsivity scores, but only in the response inhibition condition (NoGo/No Distractor). Additionally, inattentiveness was related to attenuated N2 amplitudes in the cognitive inhibition condition (Go/Distractor). These findings suggest that depending on the inhibitory demands of the task, unique cognitive outcomes may occur when different ADHD traits coexist with anxiety.

The effects of mindfulness on body awareness and interoception have been proposed as potential mechanisms for its salutary effects. However, research investigating the relationship between mindfulness and body awareness using psychophysical measures is limited. In this study, we compared 31 expert meditators with 33 matched controls on somatosensory accuracy using a somatosensory signal detection task (SSDT) alongside interoception self-report instruments. Our main hypothesis was that meditators would show increased accuracy within the SSDT, indicating higher somatosensory accuracy (body awareness) and that this would be accompanied by neural correlates of increased alpha modulation over the somatosensory cortex as measured through EEG. Participants were asked to detect a near-threshold tactile sensation, which was combined with a non-informative light in 50% of the cases. Associations between prestimulus alpha activity and responses were analysed on a trial-by-trial basis. Contrary to our expectation, instead of an increase in accuracy, we observed a decrease in the decision threshold in meditators, while we found a decrease in prestimulus alpha power in meditators. A trial-by-trial analysis revealed a negative relationship between prestimulus alpha activity and the report of touch. Meditators self-reported higher interoceptive abilities compared to readers. These findings suggest that lower prestimulus alpha activity may have increased the probability of reporting touch within the SSDT, providing a potential mechanism for the increase in response rate in meditators. Our study indicates that meditation practice alters body awareness as shown by modulated prestimulus alpha activity, potentially decreasing the filter function over the somatosensory cortex.

Using the N-back task, we investigated how memory load influences the neural activity of the Chinese character cognitive subprocess (recognition, updating, and maintenance) in Mainland Chinese speakers. Twenty-seven participants completed the Chinese character N-back paradigm while having their event-related potentials recorded. The study employed time and frequency domain analyses of EEG data. Results showed that accuracy decreased and response times increased with larger N values. For ERPs, N2pc and P300 amplitudes decreased, and SW amplitude increased with larger N values. For time frequency analyses, the desynchronization of alpha oscillations decreased after stimulus onset, but the synchronization of alpha oscillations increased during the maintenance phase. The results suggest that greater memory load is related to a decrease in cognitive resources during updating and an increase in cognitive resources during information maintenance. Results of a brain-behavior relevant analysis showed that the ERP indicators in the maintenance phase predicted behavioral performance.

Understanding the subprocesses of risky decision-making is prerequisite for understanding (dys-)functional decisions. For the present fMRI study we designed a variant of the balloon-analogue-risk task (BART) that allows separating decision making from reward anticipation and feedback processing. 29 healthy young adults completed the BART. We analyzed neural activity and functional connectivity. Parametric modulation allowed assessing changes in brain functioning depending on the riskiness of the decision. Our results confirm involvement of Nacc, Insula, ACC and DLPFC in all subprocesses of risky decision making. In addition, subprocesses were differentiated by the strength of activation in these regions, as well as by changes in activity and Nacc-connectivity by the riskiness of the decision. The presented fMRI-BART variant allows distinguishing activity and connectivity during the subprocesses of risky decision making and shows how activation and connectivity patterns relate to the riskiness of the decision. Hence, it is a useful tool for unraveling impairments in subprocesses of risky decision making in people with high risk behavior.

The aim of this study was to explore the mechanism of the age-related P3 ‘anterior’ shift using high-precision temporal principal components analysis (tPCA). Continuous EEG was recorded from younger and older adults while completing a two-stimulus visual oddball task. We narrowed our tPCA input to the P3 range to enhance precision and reveal potentially overlapping temporal components. eLORETA was used to model group and condition-related differences in component sources to further understanding of the functional relevance and neurobiology of the P3 anterior shift. The target P3a and P3b and the nontarget P3/l-P3 (late P3) evidenced the expected anterior shift. There was a general reduction in P3 component amplitudes in older compared to younger adults across both stimulus types, consistent with the P3 ‘ageing effect’. For all P3 components, eLORETA modelled changes in activation of multiple and diffuse sources with age, suggesting that neural processing is extending beyond frontal regions and that crosstalk between different neural networks is likely. Findings are aligned with the dedifferentiation hypothesis, as reduced P3 target amplitudes reflect attenuated responding to a preferred stimulus, and the anterior shift to nontargets is a form of neural broadening, or decreased selectivity of processing and increased responding to a non-preferred stimulus.

Behavioral and neural correlates of response inhibition are assumed to manifest in self-reported impulsivity and compulsivity, but findings are inconsistent. Existing studies often examined only isolated components of the complex underlying neural process and used sumscores of impulsivity and compulsivity. Yet, there is evidence suggesting that alterations in response inhibition may be linked to specific subfacets of the multidimensional constructs. Therefore, our aim was twofold: to investigate behavioral and neural correlates of response inhibition in a comprehensive way, and to examine whether these effects are associated with urgency, compulsivity, or the interaction of both. We examined 233 participants who performed a stop-signal task while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The analysis involved single-trial regression and latency analyses, exploring the relationships with self-reported urgency and compulsivity. Stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) was not related to urgency or compulsivity. SSRT and urgency scores were negatively associated with an attenuated successful inhibition-P3 effect. Crucially, whereas long SSRT was associated with a reduced attention-P1 effect and a later onset and peak of the P3, we observed the opposite pattern for higher urgency with higher P1 related activity and an earlier onset and peak of the successful inhibition-P3. Associations with compulsivity were not observed. The absence of a direct association between urgency and SSRT can possibly be clarified by considering early attentional processes reflected in P1 and latency effects during response inhibition. Urgency appears to be related to increased recruitment of early attention and a faster action cancellation process that may compensate the reduced P3 related activity.

An increase in alternative activation in cerebral lateralisation with the ultradian rhythm dominates sympathetic or parasympathetic phases. In this study, we tested the reaction time (RT) of right-handed younger people to an auditory stimulus by shifting the ultradian rhythm to the sympathetic activation (SA) period. Twenty-three women and 7 men students volunteered for our study. In the resting period and SA phase, after measuring the participants’ blood pressure, heart rate, and nasal dominance, we assessed their right and left-hand RTs against regular and irregular auditory stimuli. SA was provided by running for 5 minutes on a treadmill at a rate that doubled the resting heart rate. In the SA phase, right-and left-hand RTs were accelerated in both stimulus types compared to pre-exercise (p<.05). With regular stimuli, the difference between right and left-hand RTs was insignificant in both the resting period and SA (p>.05). However, with irregular stimuli, the left-hand RT was faster than the right-hand RT for the resting period and after SA (p<.01). We conclude that the known superiority of the right hemisphere in processing non-verbal sounds, and its greater functionality in the formation of attention compared with the left hemisphere, accelerated the left-hand RT against irregular stimuli. Although the right hand and the motor area of the left hemisphere have an advantage of learned automatic motor skills, we suppose that the right hemisphere is superior in reaching the non-verbal sounds to the auditory cortex and the right auditory cortex processes these sensory signals faster via short-cut pathways.

While previous research has investigated the effects of emotional videos on peripheral physiological measures and conscious experience, this study extends the research to include cortical measures, specifically the steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP). A carefully curated set of 45 videos, designed to represent a wide range of emotional and neutral content, were presented with a flickering border. The videos featured a continuous single-shot perspective, natural soundtrack, and excluded elements associated with professional films, to enhance realism. The results demonstrate a consistent reduction in ssVEP amplitude during emotional videos which strongly correlates with the rated emotional intensity of the clips. This suggests that narrative audiovisual stimuli have the potential to track dynamic emotional processing in the cortex, providing new avenues for research in affective neuroscience. The findings highlight the potential of using realistic video stimuli to investigate how the human brain processes emotional events in a paradigm that increases ecological validity. Future studies can further develop this paradigm by expanding the video set, targeting specific cortical networks, and manipulating narrative predictability. Overall, this study establishes a foundation for investigating emotional perception using realistic video stimuli and has the potential to expand our understanding of real-world emotional processing in the human brain.

This study explored the link between Perception Attachment Security (PAS), neurobehavioral dynamics during emotion recognition, and social skills using a hierarchical multilinear EEG model. We used facial expression recognition tasks, behavior, and socio-affective measures to model a lower-dimensional parameter (LDP), which we built to encapsulate specific task-related neurobehavioral patterns influenced by personal history. We hypothesized that higher PAS levels would correlate with better emotion recognition performance and social skills. Our results showed an early midline occipital LDP/PAS increase at around 70 and 170 ms, suggesting that attachment security influences the nervous system’s organization and early neurobehavioral processes. We suggest this implies higher attachment security individuals might be better at perceiving and understanding emotions, leading to improved social competence. Social competence was found to affect early LDP dynamics over right hemisphere sensors, emphasizing the role of positive social skills and attachment security in processing facial expressions of emotions. In later temporal stages, LDP dynamics linked with antisocial behavior showed an increase around 200 ms post-stimulus, suggesting cognitive resources might be used to disengage from or maintain emotional processing, possibly hindering the consideration of interpersonal interactions and contextual factors vital for social skill development. This underscores the need to consider a wide range of factors to fully understand social competence.

Recent evidence indicates that measures of brain functioning as indexed by event-related potentials (ERP) on the electroencephalogram aligns more closely to transdiagnostic measures of psychopathology than to categorical taxonomies. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a transdiagnostic, dimensional framework aiming to solve issues of comorbidity, symptom heterogeneity and arbitrary diagnostic boundaries. Based on shared features, the emotional disorders are allocated into subfactors Distress and Fear. Evidence indicate that disorders which are close in the HiTOP hierarchy share etiology, symptom profiles and treatment outcome. However, further studies testing the biological underpinnings of the HiTOP are called for. In this study, we assessed differences between Distress and Fear in a range of well-studied ERP components. Fifty-one patients with emotional disorders were divided into two groups (Distress, N = 26; Fear, N = 25) according to HiTOP criteria and compared against 37 healthy comparison subjects (HC). Addressing issues in traditional ERP preprocessing and analysis methods, we applied robust single-trial analysis as implemented in the EEGLAB toolbox LIMO EEG. Several ERP components were found to differ between the groups. Surprisingly, we found no difference between Fear and HC for any of the ERPs. This suggests that some well-established results from the literature, e.g., increased error-related negativity in OCD, is not a shared neurobiological correlate of the Fear subfactor. Conversely, for Distress, we found reductions compared to Fear and HC in several ERP components across paradigms. Future studies could utilize HiTOP-validated psychopathology measures to more precisely define subfactor groups.

Our actions shape our everyday experience: what we experience, how we perceive and remember it, is deeply affected by how we interact with the world. Performing an action to deliver a stimulus engages neurophysiological processes which are reflected in the modulation of sensory and pupil responses. In this study, we hypothesized that these processes shape memory encoding, parsing the experience by grouping self- and externally-generated stimuli into differentiated events. Participants encoded sound sequences, in which either the first or last few sounds were self-generated and the rest externally-generated. We tested recall of the sequential order of sounds that had originated from the same (within event) or different sources (across events). Memory performance was not higher for within event sounds, suggesting that the memory representation was not structured by actions. However, during encoding, we replicated the well-known electrophysiological response attenuation, together with increased pupil dilation for self-generated sounds. Moreover, we found that at the boundary between events, physiological responses to the first sound originating from the new source were determined by the direction of the source switch. The results suggest that introducing actions, acts as a stronger contextual shift than removing them, despite not directly contributing to memory performance. The findings contribute to our understanding of how interacting with sensory input shapes our experiences, by addressing the unexplored relationships between action effects on sensory responses, pupil dilation and memory encoding, and discarding a meaningful contribution of low-level neurophysiological mechanisms associated to action execution in the modulation of memory.

The neural circuits of reward processing and interval timing (including perception and production) are functionally intertwined, suggesting that it might be possible for momentary reward processing to influence subsequent timing behavior. Previous animal and human studies have mainly focused on the effect of reward on interval perception, whereas its impact on interval production is less clear. In this study, we examined whether feedback, as an example of performance-contingent reward, biases interval production. We recorded EEG from 20 participants while they engaged in a continuous drumming task with different realistic tempos (1728 trials per participant). Participants received color-coded feedback after each beat about whether they were correct (on time) or incorrect (early or late). Regression-based EEG analysis was used to unmix the rapid occurrence of a feedback response called the reward positivity (RewP), which is traditionally observed in more slow-paced tasks. Using linear mixed modelling, we found that RewP amplitude predicted timing behavior for the upcoming beat. This performance-biasing effect of the RewP was interpreted as reflecting the impact of fluctuations in dopaminergic activities on timing, and the necessity of continuous paradigms to make such observations was highlighted.

Vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) at resting-state has been associated to cognitive functions dependent on cognitive control, such as memory. However, little is known about the phasic interaction between cognitive and autonomic control. In a pre-registered within-between-subject designed experiment, the potential of vmHRV biofeedback to simultaneously stimulate vmHRV during memory processing and cognitive control over memory was tested, along with investigating psychophysiological association. 71 young healthy adults completed (twice) a false memory task in virtual reality. Immediately before memory encoding and retrieval, participants practiced either vmHRV biofeedback or a control breathing exercise. Cognitive control over memory was assessed as the confidence towards false memories and the capability to discriminate them from true memories. Resting-state vmHRV before each test and phasic vmHRV during memory encoding and retrieval was measured as the root mean square differences (RMSSD) in heart period. vmHRV biofeedback had neither an immediate effect on cognitive control over memory nor on phasic RMSSD. Both metrics were associated only under consideration of the resting-state and heart rate values. Cognitive control over memory was positively predicted by parallel reactivity (i.e., change from baseline) in heart rate (ß = .333) and RMSSD (ß = .238) at memory retrieval. In consistence with previous psychophysiological models, the findings demonstrate a link between cognitive and phasic vagally-mediated autonomic control which extends to higher-level cognitive functions such as long-term memory. In this context, memory performance seems to be dependent on tonic and phasic (frequency) components of parasympathetic modulation in response to memory processing.

Individuals with depression experience more negative imagery and less vivid positive imagery, and the late positive potential (LPP) is considered as a viable biomarker for negative attentional and memory biases in depression; however, the LPP response to emotional imagery in depressed individuals remains unclear. This study aims to investigate neural response to emotional imagery in depressed individuals. ERPs were recorded from 40 depressed participants and 44 healthy controls during the encoding-imagery task. Depressed participants scored significantly lower in the valence rating of sad and neutral imagery compared to healthy participants. Importantly, the LPP amplitudes to sad imagery in depressed participants were significantly larger than healthy controls, particularly in the middle (800-1,400 ms) and late time windows(1,400-2,000 ms). Furthermore, depressed individuals exhibited significantly higher LPP amplitudes for sad imagery compared to happy imagery, whereas healthy participants showed the opposite pattern. The present study provides evidence that depressed individuals display abnormal electrophysiological reactivity to sad imagery, which offers a new perspective for understanding the mechanisms underlying depression.

Anxiety is a common psychological disorder associated with affective disorders and associated with other mental disorders, with depression being the most common comorbidity. Few studies have examined the neural mechanisms underlying anxiety after controlling for depressive symptoms. This study aimed to explore whether there are differences in cortical activation in anxiety patients with different severity whose depressive symptoms is normal. In current study, depression levels were normal for 366 subjects—139 healthy subjects, 117 with mild anxiety, and 110 with major anxiety. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and a verbal fluency task (VFT) tested subjects’ anxiety and depression and cognitive function, respectively. A 53-channel guided near-infrared spectroscopic imaging technology (fNIRS) detected the concentration of oxyhemoglobin (oxy-Hb). Correlation analysis between anxiety severity and oxy-Hb concentration in the brain cortex was performed, as well as ANOVA analysis of oxy-Hb concentration among the three anxiety severity groups. Results showed that anxiety severity was significantly and negatively correlated with oxy-Hb concentration in the left frontal eye field (lFEF) and in the right dorsolateral prefrontal area (rDLPFC). The oxy-Hb concentration in the lFEF and the rDLPFC were significantly lower in the major anxiety disorder group than that in the control group. This suggests that decreased cortical activity of lFEF and rDLPFC may be neural markers of anxiety symptoms after control depressive symptoms. Anxiety symptoms without depressive symptoms may be result from the dysfunction of cognitive control network (CCN) which includes lFEF and rDLPFC.

Introduction: The rating of perceived exertion (RPE) is a widely used method for monitoring the load during training, as it provides insight into the subjective intensity of effort experienced during exercises. Considering the role of brain in monitoring and perception of the effort, several studies explored the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on RPE in different populations. The aim of current study is to review the studies investigated the effect of tDCS on RPE in three groups including healthy untrained people, physically active persons and athletes. Method: Nine databases were searched for papers assessing the effect of tDCS on RPE. The data of included studies were extracted and methodological quality examined using the risk of bias 2 (ROB2) tool. Thirty-three studies met the inclusion criteria. Results: According to the meta-analysis, active a-tDCS significantly decreased the RPE compared to the sham-stimulation. The a-tDCS could decrease the RPE when it was applied over M1 or DLPF. Regarding the measurement tool, Borg’s scale 6-20 and OMNI scale could show an improvement in RPE scale. Conclusion: A-tDCS is a promising technique that can decrease improve the RPE. M1 and DLPFC are suggested as the target area of stimulation. From the tools that measure the RPE, Borg’s RPE 6-20 and OMNI scale could better show the effect of a-tDCS.

Disorders marked by high levels of impulsivity and compulsivity have been linked to changes in performance monitoring, specifically the error-related negativity (ERN). We investigated the relationship between performance monitoring and individual differences in impulsivity and compulsivity. A total of 142 participants were recruited into four groups, each with different combinations of impulsivity and compulsivity, and they performed a flanker task to assess error-related brain activity. We defined error-related brain activity as ERN amplitude and theta power. Single trial regression was employed to analyze the amplitude differences between incorrect and correct trials within the ERN time window. The findings revealed that impulsivity, compulsivity and different measures of response processing exhibited distinct interactions, which were influenced by the configuration of impulsivity and compulsivity, but also depending on the measure of response processing. Specifically, high compulsivity predicted larger ERN amplitudes in individuals with low impulsivity, whereas high impulsivity had no effect on ERN amplitude in individuals with low compulsivity. Furthermore, when both impulsivity and compulsivity were high, no increase in ERN amplitude was observed; instead, there was a reduced difference between incorrect and correct trials. No significant differences were found for theta power. While the association between error-related brain activity and transdiagnostic markers or psychopathology may be smaller than generally assumed, considering the interaction between different transdiagnostic markers and their facets can enhance our understanding of the complex associations that arise during the investigation of neural correlates of performance monitoring, specifically the ERN.

The human brain is postulated to function as a prediction machine, constantly comparing incoming sensory input to predictions based on past experiences. When an event contradicts these predictions, it results in a prediction error (PE), which has been shown to enhance subsequent memory. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the influence of PE on subsequent memory remain unclear. This study investigated the electrophysiological correlates during encoding and retrieval of events eliciting PE. We employed a statistical learning task in which participants were presented with pairs of objects in sequence. Subsequently, while recording electroencephalography (EEG), we introduced PE by replacing the second object of each pair with new objects and we then tested the participants’ memory. Behaviorally, PE did not enhance memory. During retrieval, we observed higher amplitudes of the posterior recollection component for violation items that were remembered compared to those that were forgotten. In contrast, no evidence for the presence of the frontal negative familiarity component was found. These results suggest that recollection, but not familiarity, plays a crucial role in the interplay between PE and memory. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not observe a relationship between PE and the P3 component during encoding. In conclusion, our study contributes to the growing body of knowledge concerning the intricate relationship between PE and episodic memory. It sheds light on the underlying neural mechanisms involved and emphasizes the importance of recollection in this context.