Effects of an Audiovisual Emotion Perception Training for Schizophrenia: A Preliminary Study.

Individuals with schizophrenia show a reduced ability to integrate facial and vocal information in emotion perception. Although emotion perception has been a target for treatment, no study has yet examined the effect of multimodal training on emotion perception in schizophrenia. In the present study, we developed an audiovisual emotion perception training and test in which a voice and a face were simultaneously presented, and subjects were asked to judge whether the emotions of the voice and the face matched. The voices were either angry or happy, and the faces were morphed on a continuum ranging from angry to happy. Sixteen patients with schizophrenia participated in six training sessions and three test sessions (i.e., pre-training, post-training, and generalization). Eighteen healthy controls participated only in pre-training test session. Prior to training, the patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than did the controls in the recognition of anger; however, following the training, the patients showed a significant improvement in recognizing anger, which was maintained and generalized to a new set of stimuli. The patients also improved the recognition of happiness following the training, but this effect was not maintained or generalized. These results provide preliminary evidence that a multimodal, audiovisual training may yield improvements in anger perception for patients with schizophrenia.

Multisensory Facial Stimulation Implicitly Improves Evaluations of the Goodness of Attractive Others.

It has been well demonstrated that shared multisensory experiences between the self and others can influence the social perception of out-group members. Previous research has shown that the illusion of ownership over a dark-skinned rubber hand or full virtual body generated less negative implicit bias against people with dark skin. However, less is known about how perceived attractiveness difference between self and other affects social perception toward those others after shared multisensory experience. The present study assessed whether shared multisensory experience between the self and attractive others would affect the implicit evaluation of goodness of others. Seventy-three women participated in the study. After the visuotactile multisensory stimulation procedure, participants were administered the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT), which presents two attributes (good and bad) and one concept (other). Results showed that the more attractive the faces are, the more positive their implicit evaluation becomes after the synchronous tactile stimulation. This result suggests that shared multisensory experience makes people feel more positive toward others who have positive attribute. This finding suggests that self-other blurring in social contexts might be a compelling factor in evaluating other people positively.

Classifying Schizotypy Using an Audiovisual Emotion Perception Test and Scalp Electroencephalography.

Schizotypy refers to the personality trait of experiencing "psychotic" symptoms and can be regarded as a predisposition of schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology (Raine, 1991). Cumulative evidence has revealed that individuals with schizotypy, as well as schizophrenia patients, have emotional processing deficits. In the present study, we investigated multimodal emotion perception in schizotypy and implemented the machine learning technique to find out whether a schizotypy group (ST) is distinguishable from a control group (NC), using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Forty-five subjects (30 ST and 15 NC) were divided into two groups based on their scores on a Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. All participants performed an audiovisual emotion perception test while EEG was recorded. After the preprocessing stage, the discriminatory features were extracted using a mean subsampling technique. For an accurate estimation of covariance matrices, the shrinkage linear discriminant algorithm was used. The classification attained over 98% accuracy and zero rate of false-positive results. This method may have important clinical implications in discriminating those among the general population who have a subtle risk for schizotypy, requiring intervention in advance.

The effect of cognitive reappraisal on long-term emotional experience and emotional memory.

One's ability to properly regulate emotion is critical to psychological and physical well-being. Among various strategies to regulate emotion, cognitive reappraisal has been shown to modulate both emotional experience and emotional memory. However, most studies of reappraisal have focused on reappraisal of negative situations, with reappraisal of positive emotion receiving considerably less attention. In addition, the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions to stimuli are typically only assessed either immediately or after a short delay, and it remains unclear whether reappraisal effects persist over longer time periods. We investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional reactions and long-term episodic memory for positive and negative stimuli. Men and women viewed emotionally negative, positive, and neutral pictures while they were instructed to either increase, decrease, or maintain the initial emotional reactions elicited by the pictures. Subjective ratings of emotional valence and arousal were assessed during the regulation task and again after 1 week. Memory for the pictures was assessed with free recall. Results indicated that pictures accompanied by instructions to increase emotion were better recalled than pictures reappraised to decrease emotion. Modulation of emotional arousal elicited by stimuli persisted over a week, but this effect was observed only for men. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal can have long-lasting effects on emotional reactions to stimuli. However, the sex differences observed for the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions highlight the importance of considering individual differences in the effects of regulation.

Representation of cognitive reappraisal goals in frontal gamma oscillations.

Recently, numerous efforts have been made to understand the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive regulation of emotion, such as cognitive reappraisal. Many studies have reported that cognitive control of emotion induces increases in neural activity of the control system, including the prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and increases or decreases (depending upon the regulation goal) in neural activity of the appraisal system, including the amygdala and the insula. It has been hypothesized that information about regulation goals needs to be processed through interactions between the control and appraisal systems in order to support cognitive reappraisal. However, how this information is represented in the dynamics of cortical activity remains largely unknown. To address this, we investigated temporal changes in gamma band activity (35-55 Hz) in human electroencephalograms during a cognitive reappraisal task that was comprised of three reappraisal goals: to decease, maintain, or increase emotional responses modulated by affect-laden pictures. We examined how the characteristics of gamma oscillations, such as spectral power and large-scale phase synchronization, represented cognitive reappraisal goals. We found that left frontal gamma power decreased, was sustained, or increased when the participants suppressed, maintained, or amplified their emotions, respectively. This change in left frontal gamma power appeared during an interval of 1926 to 2453 ms after stimulus onset. We also found that the number of phase-synchronized pairs of gamma oscillations over the entire brain increased when participants regulated their emotions compared to when they maintained their emotions. These results suggest that left frontal gamma power may reflect cortical representation of emotional states modulated by cognitive reappraisal goals and gamma phase synchronization across whole brain regions may reflect emotional regulatory efforts to achieve these goals. Our study may provide the basis for an electroencephalogram-based neurofeedback system for the cognitive regulation of emotion.

Decursin attenuates kainic acid-induced seizures in mice.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder with recurrent unprovoked seizures as the main symptom. Of the coumarin derivatives in Angelica gigas, decursin, a major coumarin component, was reported to exhibit significant protective activity against glutamate-induced neurotoxicity when added to primary cultures of rat cortical cells. This study served to investigate the effects of decursin on a kainic acid (KA)-induced status epilepticus model. Thirty minutes after intraperitoneal injections of decursin (20 mg/kg) in male 7-week-old C57BL/6 mice, the animals were treated with KA (30 mg/kg, intraperitoneally) and then examined for behavioral seizure score, electroencephalogram, seizure-related expressed protein levels, neuronal cell loss, neurodegeneration, and astrogliosis. KA injections significantly enhanced neurodegenerative conditions but treatment with decursin 30 min before KA injection reduced the detrimental effects of KA in mice. The decursin-treated KA-injected group showed significantly decreased behavioral seizure activity and remarkably attenuated intense and high-frequency seizure discharges in the parietal cortex for 2 h compared with the group treated only with KA. Furthermore, in-vivo results indicated that decursin strongly inhibits selective neuronal death, astrogliosis, and oxidative stress induced by KA administration. Therefore decursin is able to attenuate KA-induced seizures and could have potential as an antiepileptic drug.

The modulation of parietal gamma oscillations in the human electroencephalogram with cognitive reappraisal.

The present study examines how gamma oscillations can be modulated by cognitive reappraisal. Thirty-two participants performed cognitive reappraisal tasks to increase or decrease their emotions while viewing neutral and emotional (positive or negative) pictures. As a control task, the participants also simply viewed the pictures without an attempt to manipulate emotions. Electroencephalograms of the participants were recorded during the cognitive reappraisal tasks to extract the gamma oscillations. Gamma activity was quantified by measuring event-related changes in the gamma band power (30-55 Hz). During the tasks, the greatest gamma activity was found at the parietal regions. Greater parietal gamma activity was induced by the emotional pictures compared with the neutral ones when the participants passively viewed the pictures. No such difference in the parietal gamma activity was found when the participants performed the cognitive reappraisal tasks. In addition, parietal gamma activity during the cognitive reappraisal tasks was greater than that during the control task in response to the neutral pictures, implying the role of parietal gamma activity in the top-down cognitive execution process. In contrast, parietal gamma activity during the cognitive reappraisal task to increase emotions was greater than the levels of activity during the task to decrease emotions and during the control task in response to the emotional pictures, implying the role of parietal gamma activity in the bottom-up sensory emotional process. These results suggest that parietal gamma activity may be implicated in the multiple cognitive reappraisal processes.

Modulation of theta phase synchronization in the human electroencephalogram during a recognition memory task.

To the extent that recognition memory relies on interactions among widely distributed neural assemblies across the brain, phase synchronization between brain rhythms may play an important role in meditating those interactions. As the theta rhythm is known to modulate in power during the recognition memory process, we aimed to determine how the phase synchronization of the theta rhythms across the brain changes with recognition memory. Fourteen human participants performed a visual object recognition task in a virtual reality environment. Electroencephalograms were recorded from the scalp of the participants while they either recognized objects that had been presented previously or identified new objects. From the electroencephalogram recordings, we analyzed the phase-locking value of the theta rhythms, which indicates the degree of phase synchronization. We found that the overall phase-locking value recorded during the recognition of previously viewed objects was greater than that recorded during the identification of new objects. Specifically, the theta rhythms became strongly synchronized between the frontal and the left parietal areas during the recognition of previously viewed objects. These results suggest that the recognition memory process may involve an interaction between the frontal and the left parietal cortical regions mediated by theta phase synchronization.

Korean version of frontal assessment battery: psychometric properties and normative data.

BACKGROUND: We developed the Korean version of the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB-K), evaluated its psychometric properties and constructed normative data for Korean elders. METHODS: FAB-K was administered to 300 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and 635 normal controls. Reliability of FAB-K was evaluated by testing its internal consistency, test-retest and inter-rater reliabilities. Validity of FAB-K was evaluated by testing discriminant validity for AD and concurrent validity with other frontal function tests. Age- and education-specific normative data of FAB-K were developed. RESULTS: Cronbach's alpha, inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability of FAB-K were 0.802, 0.980 (p < 0.001) and 0.820 (p < 0.001), respectively. FAB-K exhibited significant correlations with the scores of MMSE and other frontal function tests (p < 0.01). Total and item scores of FAB-K were lower in AD patients than in controls and became worse as clinical dementia rating increased (F = 192.026, d.f. = 4, p < 0.001). The optimal cut-off score of FAB-K for AD was determined as 10/11, where sensitivity and specificity for AD were 0.717 and 0.827, respectively. Normative data were stratified by 3 age groups and 4 education groups. CONCLUSION: The FAB-K is a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating frontal dysfunction, and may be useful for screening AD.

Development of the Subjective Memory Complaints Questionnaire.

AIM: We aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Subjective Memory Complaints Questionnaire (SMCQ). METHODS: The reliability of the SMCQ was evaluated by testing its internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Pearson correlation analyses were performed to assess the concurrent validity. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the construct validity. Diagnostic ability for dementia was tested with receiver operator characteristic curve analyses. RESULTS: Cronbach's alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficients of the SMCQ were 0.864 and 0.828 (p < 0.001), respectively. The SMCQ scores were significantly correlated with the scores on Camdex Memory Complaint Questionnaire, Seoul Informant Report Questionnaire for Dementia and cognitive tests from the CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease) neuropsychological test battery (p < 0.01). The results of confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that the SMCQ consisted of subjective memory complaints (SMC) for general memory and for everyday memory. The SMCQ score discriminated well between nondemented elderly without dementia and those with dementia (p < 0.01). The area under the curve value of the SMCQ was 0.84, indicating that it had high diagnostic ability. CONCLUSION: The SMCQ was found to be a brief, reliable and valid questionnaire for evaluating SMC. It might be useful for evaluating the cognition of elderly subjects when reliable informants are not available.

Effects of spaced retrieval training (SRT) on cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients.

Among the non-pharmacological treatments of dementia, SRT is a good candidate strategy for rehabilitating the cognition of AD patients. This study investigates the efficacy of SRT on the cognition of AD patients with very mild to mild disease. We administered 24-session SRT to 13 very mild and 6 mild AD patients. To assess the change of the neuropsychological performance after SRT, we performed the Korean version of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease neuropsychological battery (CERAD-K), the logical memory test (LMT), the Benton visual retention test A (BVRT-A), and the digit span test (DST). All tests were administered both before and after SRT. Retention spans were significantly increased up to 24 min after SRT in both very mild and mild AD patients (p<0.05), and this improvement was maintained for different sets of target information. Retainable words were also significantly increased after SRT in the very mild AD patients (p=0.007). However, we observed no changes in neuropsychological performance after SRT. Although we did not observe improvements in the neuropsychological tests following SRT, our results suggest that the treatment was an effective intervention for improving the memory of very mild to mild AD patients, and could potentially improve learning and retention outside the training session.