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Psychological Bulletin Jan 2016Cognitive theories of depression and anxiety have traditionally emphasized the role of attentional biases in the processing of negative information. The dot-probe task... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
Cognitive theories of depression and anxiety have traditionally emphasized the role of attentional biases in the processing of negative information. The dot-probe task has been widely used to study this phenomenon. Recent findings suggest that biased processing of positive information might also be an important aspect of developing psychopathological symptoms. However, despite some evidence suggesting persons with symptoms of depression and anxiety may avoid positive information, many dot-probe studies have produced null findings. The present review used conventional and novel meta-analytic methods to evaluate dot-probe attentional biases away from positive information and, for comparison, toward negative information, in depressed and anxious individuals. Results indicated that avoidance of positive information is a real effect exhibiting substantial evidential value among persons experiencing psychopathology, with individuals evidencing primary symptoms of depression clearly demonstrating this effect. Different theoretical explanations for these findings are evaluated, including those positing threat-processing structures, even-handedness, self-regulation, and reward devaluation, with the novel theory of reward devaluation emphasized and expanded. These novel findings and theory suggest that avoidance of prospective reward helps to explain the cause and sustainability of depressed states. Suggestions for future research and methodological advances are discussed.
Topics: Anxiety; Avoidance Learning; Cognition; Depression; Female; Humans; Male; Mental Processes; Reward; Self-Control
PubMed: 26619211
DOI: 10.1037/bul0000022 -
The Neuroscientist : a Review Journal... Apr 2004Understanding language relies on concurrent activation of multiple areas within a distributed neural network. Hemodynamic measures (fMRI and PET) indicate their... (Review)
Review
Understanding language relies on concurrent activation of multiple areas within a distributed neural network. Hemodynamic measures (fMRI and PET) indicate their location, and electromagnetic measures (magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography) reveal the timing of brain activity during language processing. Their combination can show the spatiotemporal characteristics (where and when) of the underlying neural network. Activity to written and spoken words starts in sensory-specific areas and progresses anteriorly via respective ventral ("what") processing streams toward the simultaneously active supramodal regions. The process of understanding a word in its current context peaks about 400 ms after word onset. It is carried out mainly through interactions of the temporal and inferior prefrontal areas on the left during word reading and bilateral temporo-prefrontal areas during speech processing. Neurophysiological evidence suggests that lexical access, semantic associations, and contextual integration may be simultaneous as the brain uses available information in a concurrent manner, with the final goal of rapidly comprehending verbal input. Because the same areas may participate in multiple stages of semantic or syntactic processing, it is crucial to consider both spatial and temporal aspects of their interactions to appreciate how the brain understands words.
Topics: Brain Mapping; Cerebral Cortex; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Functional Laterality; Humans; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; Language; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Magnetoencephalography; Mental Processes; Space Perception; Speech Perception; Synapses; Time Perception; Verbal Learning
PubMed: 15070488
DOI: 10.1177/1073858403261018 -
Sleep Medicine Reviews Jun 2013Mitigation of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation in operational settings is critical for safety and productivity. Achievements in this area are hampered by... (Review)
Review
Mitigation of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation in operational settings is critical for safety and productivity. Achievements in this area are hampered by limited knowledge about the effects of sleep loss on actual job tasks. Sleep deprivation has different effects on different cognitive performance tasks, but the mechanisms behind this task-specificity are poorly understood. In this context it is important to recognize that cognitive performance is not a unitary process, but involves a number of component processes. There is emerging evidence that these component processes are differentially affected by sleep loss. Experiments have been conducted to decompose sleep-deprived performance into underlying cognitive processes using cognitive-behavioral, neuroimaging and cognitive modeling techniques. Furthermore, computational modeling in cognitive architectures has been employed to simulate sleep-deprived cognitive performance on the basis of the constituent cognitive processes. These efforts are beginning to enable quantitative prediction of the effects of sleep deprivation across different task contexts. This paper reviews a rapidly evolving area of research, and outlines a theoretical framework in which the effects of sleep loss on cognition may be understood from the deficits in the underlying neurobiology to the applied consequences in real-world job tasks.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Brain; Child; Child, Preschool; Cognition Disorders; Computer Simulation; Decision Making; Executive Function; Humans; Individuality; Mental Processes; Mental Recall; Neural Networks, Computer; Neuropsychological Tests; Reaction Time; Sleep Deprivation
PubMed: 22884948
DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2012.06.007 -
BMC Psychiatry Oct 2021There is overwhelming evidence for a strong association between childhood trauma and adult psychopathology. This study aimed to investigate the mediation roles of...
BACKGROUND
There is overwhelming evidence for a strong association between childhood trauma and adult psychopathology. This study aimed to investigate the mediation roles of alexithymia, sensory processing sensitivity, and emotional-mental processes in the relationship between childhood traumas and adult psychopathology.
METHODS
The sample consisted of 337 people (78.9% female, 21.1% male) aged between 20 and 64 years. Participants filled the scales online via a Google form. Reading Mind in the Eyes (EYES), Sensory Processing Sensitivity Scale (SPS), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-26), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) were used. PROCESS (Model 4) macro was used to examine the mediating role of sensory processing sensitivity, alexithymia, and the EYES test results in the relationship between childhood trauma and psychopathology.
RESULTS
The results of mediation analysis demonstrated that sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia mediated the relationship between childhood trauma and adult psychopathology. However, the EYES test (mentalization) did not mediate in this relationship.
CONCLUSION
This study shows that childhood traumas may relate to more psychological symptoms in individuals with high sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia. Our study may contribute to the understanding of what may lead to a person's vulnerability to experiencing psychological symptoms after childhood trauma. It may be crucial that future treatment and intervention programs should include sensory sensitivity and alexithymia. Sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia can be examined in the treatment of psychological problems of individuals who have experienced childhood trauma.
Topics: Adult; Adult Survivors of Child Abuse; Affective Symptoms; Emotions; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Perception; Self Report; Young Adult
PubMed: 34654396
DOI: 10.1186/s12888-021-03532-4 -
Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in... Feb 2022Mental health professionals working in hospitals or community clinics inevitably face the realisation that we possess imperfect conceptual means to understand mental... (Review)
Review
Mental health professionals working in hospitals or community clinics inevitably face the realisation that we possess imperfect conceptual means to understand mental disorders. In this paper the authors bring together ideas from the fields of Philosophy, Psychiatry, Cognitive Psychology and Linguistics to reflect on the ways we represent phenomena of high practical importance that we often take for granted, but are nevertheless difficult to define in ontological terms. The paper follows through the development of the concept of psychosis over the last two centuries in the interplay of three different conceptual orientations: the categorical, dimensional and network approaches. Each of these represent the available knowledge and dominant thinking styles of the era in which they emerged and take markedly different stances regarding the nature of mental phenomena. Without particular commitment to any ontological positions or models described, the authors invite the reader into a thinking process about the strengths and weaknesses of these models, and how they can be reconciled in multidisciplinary settings to benefit the process of patient care.
Topics: Humans; Internet; Mental Processes; Philosophy; Psychiatry; Psychotic Disorders
PubMed: 35152913
DOI: 10.1186/s13010-022-00118-0 -
Cognitive Science Apr 2021Some things look more complex than others. For example, a crenulate and richly organized leaf may seem more complex than a plain stone. What is the nature of this...
Some things look more complex than others. For example, a crenulate and richly organized leaf may seem more complex than a plain stone. What is the nature of this experience-and why do we have it in the first place? Here, we explore how object complexity serves as an efficiently extracted visual signal that the object merits further exploration. We algorithmically generated a library of geometric shapes and determined their complexity by computing the cumulative surprisal of their internal skeletons-essentially quantifying the "amount of information" within each shape-and then used this approach to ask new questions about the perception of complexity. Experiments 1-3 asked what kind of mental process extracts visual complexity: a slow, deliberate, reflective process (as when we decide that an object is expensive or popular) or a fast, effortless, and automatic process (as when we see that an object is big or blue)? We placed simple and complex objects in visual search arrays and discovered that complex objects were easier to find among simple distractors than simple objects are among complex distractors-a classic search asymmetry indicating that complexity is prioritized in visual processing. Next, we explored the function of complexity: Why do we represent object complexity in the first place? Experiments 4-5 asked subjects to study serially presented objects in a self-paced manner (for a later memory test); subjects dwelled longer on complex objects than simple objects-even when object shape was completely task-irrelevant-suggesting a connection between visual complexity and exploratory engagement. Finally, Experiment 6 connected these implicit measures of complexity to explicit judgments. Collectively, these findings suggest that visual complexity is extracted efficiently and automatically, and even arouses a kind of "perceptual curiosity" about objects that encourages subsequent attentional engagement.
Topics: Attention; Exploratory Behavior; Humans; Judgment; Reaction Time; Visual Perception
PubMed: 33873259
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12933 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Jul 2009The development of sub-disciplines within cognitive neuroscience follows common sense categories such as language, audition, action, memory, emotion and perception among... (Review)
Review
The development of sub-disciplines within cognitive neuroscience follows common sense categories such as language, audition, action, memory, emotion and perception among others. There are also well-established research programmes into temporal perception, spatial perception and mathematical cognition that also reflect the subjective impression of how experience is constructed. There is of course no reason why the brain should respect these common sense, text book divisions and, here, we discuss the contention that generalized magnitude processing is a more accurate conceptual description of how the brain deals with information about time, space, number and other dimensions. The roots of the case for linking magnitudes are based on the use to which magnitude information is put (action), the way in which we learn about magnitudes (ontogeny), shared properties and locations of magnitude processing neurons, the effects of brain lesions and behavioural interference studies. Here, we assess this idea in the context of a theory of magnitude, which proposed common processing mechanisms of time, space, number and other dimensions.
Topics: Humans; Mental Processes; Parietal Lobe; Space Perception; Time Perception
PubMed: 19487186
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0028 -
Human Brain Mapping Aug 2009There have been many functional imaging studies of the brain basis of theory of mind (ToM) skills, but the findings are heterogeneous and implicate anatomical regions as... (Review)
Review
There have been many functional imaging studies of the brain basis of theory of mind (ToM) skills, but the findings are heterogeneous and implicate anatomical regions as far apart as orbitofrontal cortex and the inferior parietal lobe. The functional imaging studies are reviewed to determine whether the diverse findings are due to methodological factors. The studies are considered according to the paradigm employed (e.g., stories vs. cartoons and explicit vs. implicit ToM instructions), the mental state(s) investigated, and the language demands of the tasks. Methodological variability does not seem to account for the variation in findings, although this conclusion may partly reflect the relatively small number of studies. Alternatively, several distinct brain regions may be activated during ToM reasoning, forming an integrated functional "network." The imaging findings suggest that there are several "core" regions in the network-including parts of the prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus-while several more "peripheral" regions may contribute to ToM reasoning in a manner contingent on relatively minor aspects of the ToM task.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Deception; Empathy; Humans; Intention; Language; Mental Processes; Narration; Neuropsychological Tests; Photic Stimulation
PubMed: 19034900
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20671 -
Clinical Neurophysiology : Official... Feb 2016
Topics: Cerebral Cortex; Consciousness Disorders; Electroencephalography; Entropy; Female; Humans; Male; Mental Processes
PubMed: 26412137
DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2015.08.018 -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... Nov 2018Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment and to experience our body as a three-dimensional volumetric entity. These...
Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment and to experience our body as a three-dimensional volumetric entity. These representations are highly malleable and are modulated by a multitude of afferent and motor information. Despite some studies reporting the impact of sensory and motor modulation on body representations, the long-term relationship between sensory information and mental representation of own body parts is still unclear. We investigated hand representation in a group of expert sleight-of-hand magicians and in a group of age-matched adults naïve to magic (controls). Participants were asked to localise landmarks of their fingers when their hand position was congruent with the mental representation (Experiment 1) and when proprioceptive information was "misleading" (Experiment 2). Magicians outperformed controls in both experiments, suggesting that extensive training in sleight of hand has a profound effect in refining hand representation. Moreover, the impact of training seems to have a high body-part specificity, with a maximum impact for those body sections used more prominently during the training. Interestingly, it seems that sleight-of-hand training can lead to a specific improvement of hand mental representation, which relies less on proprioceptive information.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Analysis of Variance; Body Image; Case-Control Studies; Female; Functional Laterality; Hand; Humans; Imagination; Male; Mental Processes; Middle Aged; Proprioception; Young Adult
PubMed: 30362401
DOI: 10.1177/1747021817741606