Explore the effects of forest travel activities on university students' stress affection.

This study aims to explore the effects of forest travel activities on university students' stress affection. Forty volunteer university students participated in this study. All participants were asked to complete physiological (Heart Rate Variability) and psychological (Brief Profile of Mood State and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) tests before and after the travel activities. The results reported that students' heart rates were significantly lower after the forest travel activities than before. All domains of negative mood and anxiety decreased from the pre-test to the post-test. This study found that university students could feel less stressed if they went on forest travel activities.

The Influence of Emotional Environmental Pictures on Behavior Intentions: The Evidence of Neuroscience Technology.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, researchers have been paying increasing attention to the issues of how emotions affect people's perceptions of the environment, and how they influence people's behavior or intentions to act. The purpose of this study is to explore the influences of emotions on environmental intention to act by using the neuroscience technology electroencephalography (EEG). METHODS: A total of 70 university students participated in this study. They looked at positive and negative emotional environmental pictures and decided if they wanted to protect the environment after looking at the pictures. The participants wore an EEG cap throughout the process in order to collect their brain wave (EEG) data. RESULTS: The analysis of variance (ANOVA) results showed that the power value of meditation was significantly higher when the participants looked at the positive than at the negative emotional environmental pictures (p < 0.001). The power value of pressure was significantly higher when the participants looked at the negative than at the positive emotional environmental pictures (p < 0.001). The power value of attention was significantly higher when the participants looked at the negative than at the emotional environmental pictures (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The findings showed that positive emotional environmental pictures might promote positive emotions, but will decrease the intention to act to protect the environment. In contrast, negative emotional environmental pictures will increase negative emotions, and will also increase attention and intention to act to protect the environment. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Detect AD Patients by Using EEG Coherence Analysis.

The purpose of this study is to discriminate mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients from the normal aging. The EEG coherence was applied to analyze the data from auditory oddball paradigm to discriminate the differences of corticocortical connections between mild AD patients and healthy subjects. The results showed that the lower values of coherence were performed in mild AD patients than in the normal aging subjects, especially in theta band. The implications and suggestions are shown in this study.

Applying the Bispectral Analysis on Widespread Diffuse Cross-Frequency Interactive Effects.

The aim of this paper is applying the bispectral analysis on widespread diffuse cross-frequency interactive effects. The event-related potentials (ERPs) research method was used in this study and it could collect the widespread diffuse cross-frequency from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients' brain wave. In this study, the brain wave data were collected from 12 MCI subjects, 12 healthy elderly, and 12 healthy young. The findings showed that the decreased interhemispheric coherence of 8.8 Hz for MCI compared with healthy elderly in the central-parietal cortex to respective surrounding sites and each MCI subject showed significantly widespread diffuse pattern of cross-frequency interactions in comparison with the healthy controls in the left central-parietal and right frontal. This study provides some explanation and suggestions for these findings.

Age- and disease-related features of task-related brain oscillations by using mutual information.

The aim of this study was to investigate changes in task-related brain oscillations and corticocortical connections in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and those with normal aging using cross-mutual information (CMI) analysis. We hypothesized that task-related brain oscillations and corticocortical connections were affected by age- and disease-related changes, which could be reflected in the CMI analysis. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were measured in 16 MCI patients, 15 healthy age-matched controls, and 16 healthy younger individuals. The frequencies and interhemispheric CMI data were estimated in all groups. The specific EEG rhythms measured were delta (δ), theta (θ), alpha (α), beta (ß), and gamma (γ) bands. Significant differences in δ, θ, α, and ß bands were observed between the younger and elderly groups. However, only the θ band was significantly different between the elderly and MCI groups. Moreover, this study used EEG recordings to investigate age- and disease-related changes in the corticocortical connections of the brain. This study proves that the θ-band frequency of the connection between the parietal and occipital lobes for the age- and disease-related changes can be depicted using the CMI analysis.

Age-related changes of task-specific brain activity in normal aging.

An important question in healthcare for older patients is whether age-related changes in cortical reorganization can be measured with advancing age. This study investigated the factors behind such age-related changes, using time-frequency analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs). We hypothesized that brain rhythms was affected by age-related changes, which could be reflected in the ERP indices. An oddball task was conducted in two experimental groups, namely young participants (N=15; mean age 23.7±2.8 years) and older participants (N=15; mean age 70.1±7.9 years). Two types of stimuli were used: the target (1 kHz frequency) and standard (2 kHz frequency). We scrutinized three ERP indices: event-related spectral power (ERPSP), inter-trial phase-locking (ITPL), and event-related cross-phase coherence (ERPCOH). Both groups performed equally well for correct response rate. However, the results revealed a statistically significant age difference for inter-trial comparison. Compared with the young, the older participants showed the following age-related changes: (a) power activity decreased; however, an increase was found only in the late (P3, 280-450 ms) theta (4-7 Hz) component over the bilateral frontal and temporo-frontal areas; (b) low phase-locking in the early (N1, 80-140 ms) theta band over the parietal/frontal (right) regions appeared; (c) the functional connections decreased in the alpha (7-13 Hz) and beta (13-30 Hz) bands, but no difference emerged in the theta band between the two groups. These results indicate that age-related changes in task-specific brain activity for a normal aging population can be depicted using the three ERP indices.