Exploring the role of emotions and conversation content in interpersonal synchrony: A case study of a couple therapy session.

OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study investigated the association between interpersonal movement and physiological synchronies, emotional processing, and the conversational structure of a couple therapy session using a multimodal, mixed-method approach. METHOD: The video recordings of a couple therapy session, in which the participants' electrodermal activity was recorded, were analyzed. The session was divided into topical episodes, a qualitative analysis was conducted on each topical episode's emotional aspects, conversational structure and content. In addition, movement and physiological synchrony were calculated in each topical episode. Regression models were used to discover the associations between qualitative variables and synchronies. RESULTS: Physiological synchrony was associated with the emotional aspects of the session and to episodes in which the spouses' relationship was addressed, while movement synchrony was only related to emotional valence. No association between synchrony and conversational structure was found. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that physiological and movement synchrony play distinct roles in psychotherapy. The exploratory study sheds light on the association between momentary synchrony, emotions, and conversational structure in a couple therapy session.

Cardiorespiratory rhythm-contingent trace eyeblink conditioning in elderly adults.

Learning outcome is modified by the degree to which the subject responds and pays attention to specific stimuli. Our recent research suggests that presenting stimuli in contingency with a specific phase of the cardiorespiratory rhythm might expedite learning. Specifically, expiration-diastole (EXP-DIA) is beneficial for learning trace eyeblink conditioning (TEBC) compared with inspiration-systole (INS-SYS) in healthy young adults. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the same holds true in healthy elderly adults (n = 50, aged >70 yr). Participants were instructed to watch a silent nature film while TEBC trials were presented at either INS-SYS or EXP-DIA (separate groups). Learned responses were determined as eyeblinks occurring after the tone conditioned stimulus (CS), immediately preceding the air puff unconditioned stimulus (US). Participants were classified as learners if they made at least five conditioned responses (CRs). Brain responses to the stimuli were measured by electroencephalogram (EEG). Memory for the film and awareness of the CS-US contingency were evaluated with a questionnaire. As a result, participants showed robust brain responses to the CS, acquired CRs, and reported awareness of the CS-US relationship to a variable degree. There was no difference between the INS-SYS and EXP-DIA groups in any of the above. However, when only participants who learned were considered, those trained at EXP-DIA (n = 11) made more CRs than those trained at INS-SYS (n = 13). Thus, learned performance could be facilitated in those elderly who learned. However, training at a specific phase of cardiorespiratory rhythm did not increase the proportion of participants who learned.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We trained healthy elderly individuals in trace eyeblink conditioning, either at inspiration-systole or at expiration-diastole. Those who learned exhibited more conditioned responses when trained at expiration-diastole rather than inspiration-systole. However, there was no difference between the experimental groups in the proportion of individuals who learned or did not learn.

Electrodermal and respiratory synchrony in couple therapy in distinct therapeutic subsystems and reflection periods.

Objective Synchrony in the multi-person context of systemic therapy is a complex and understudied phenomenon. We analyzed respiratory and electrodermal synchronies within a couple therapy system with two therapists to determine whether dyadic subsystems between each client and therapist synchronized differently. We also studied synchrony in reflection periods, in which the therapists discussed the therapy process with clients listening. Finally, we examined the association of synchronies with alliance and outcome.Method: A sample of 22 therapy sessions in which electrodermal activity (EDA) and respiration were recorded were analyzed. Self-report measures of session alliance and outcome were obtained. Synchrony computation was based on windowed cross-correlation using surrogate synchrony and segment-wise shuffling of physiological time series.Results: The results supported the presence of EDA synchrony for the client-therapist and therapist-therapist dyads but not client-client dyads across entire sessions. No significant synchronies were found for respiration behavior. A similar picture was found in reflection periods. Clients' well-being as well as therapists' alliance ratings were significant predictors of client-client EDA synchrony.Conclusion: Our results point to the relational meaning of synchrony and its importance for understanding couple psychotherapy, particularly the reflection periods. Challenges involved in extending synchrony computation to multi-person settings were highlighted.

CA3-CA1 long-term potentiation occurs regardless of respiration and cardiac cycle phases in urethane-anesthetized rats.

Breathing and heartbeat synchronize to each other and to brain function and affect cognition in humans. However, it is not clear how cardiorespiratory rhythms modulate such basic processes as synaptic plasticity thought to underlie learning. Thus, we studied if respiration and cardiac cycle phases at burst stimulation onset affect hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) in the CA3-CA1 synapse in urethane-anesthetized adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. In a between-subjects design, we timed burst stimulation of the ventral hippocampal commissure (vHC) to systole or diastole either during expiration or inspiration and recorded responses throughout the hippocampus with a linear probe. As classical conditioning in humans seems to be most efficient at expiration-diastole, we also expected LTP to be most efficient if burst stimulation was targeted to expiration-diastole. However, LTP was induced equally in all four groups and respiration and cardiac cycle phase did not modulate CA1 responses to vHC stimulation overall. This could be perhaps because we bypassed all natural routes of external influences on the CA1 by directly stimulating the vHC. In the future, the effect of cardiorespiratory rhythms on synaptic plasticity could also be studied in awake state and in other parts of the hippocampal tri-synaptic loop.

Hippocampal responses to electrical stimulation of the major input pathways are modulated by dentate spikes.

Dentate gyrus (DG) is important for pattern separation and spatial memory, and it is thought to gate information flow to the downstream hippocampal subregions. Dentate spikes (DSs) are high-amplitude, fast, positive local-field potential events taking place in the DG during immobility and sleep, and they have been connected to memory consolidation in rodents. DSs are a result of signaling from the entorhinal cortex (EC) to the DG, and they suppress firing of pyramidal cells in the CA3 and CA1. To study the effects of DSs to signaling in the hippocampal tri-synaptic loop, we electrically stimulated the afferent fibers of the DG, CA3, and CA1 in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats at different delays from DSs. Responses to stimulation were increased in the EC-DG synapse during DSs, and the effect was amplified after theta-burst stimulation. We concluded that DSs strengthen the excitatory signal from the EC to the DG, which is reinforced by synapse potentiation and increased excitability of granule cells after theta-burst stimulation. This signal boosting may function in enhancing plastic changes in the DG-CA3 synapse. As responses in the CA3 and CA1 remained unaffected by the DS, the DS-contingent silencing of pyramidal cells seems to be a result of a decrease in excitatory input rather than a decrease in the excitability of the pyramidal cells themselves. In addition, we found that the DSs occur asynchronously in the left and right hippocampi, giving novel evidence of lateralization of the rodent hippocampus.

Rhythmic Memory Consolidation in the Hippocampus.

Functions of the brain and body are oscillatory in nature and organized according to a logarithmic scale. Brain oscillations and bodily functions such as respiration and heartbeat appear nested within each other and coupled together either based on phase or based on phase and amplitude. This facilitates communication in wide-spread neuronal networks and probably also between the body and the brain. It is a widely accepted view, that nested electrophysiological brain oscillations involving the neocortex, thalamus, and the hippocampus form the basis of memory consolidation. This applies especially to declarative memories, that is, memories of life events, for example. Here, we present our view of hippocampal contribution to the process of memory consolidation based on the general ideas stated above and on some recent findings on the topic by us and by other research groups. We propose that in addition to the interplay between neocortical slow oscillations, spindles, and hippocampal sharp-wave ripples during sleep, there are also additional mechanisms available in the hippocampus to control memory consolidation: a rather non-oscillatory hippocampal electrophysiological phenomenon called the dentate spike might provide a means to not only consolidate but to also modify the neural representation of declarative memories. Further, we suggest that memory consolidation in the hippocampus might be in part paced by breathing. These considerations might open new possibilities for regulating memory consolidation in rest and sleep.

Associations Between Sympathetic Nervous System Synchrony, Movement Synchrony, and Speech in Couple Therapy.

Background: Research on interpersonal synchrony has mostly focused on a single modality, and hence little is known about the connections between different types of social attunement. In this study, the relationship between sympathetic nervous system synchrony, movement synchrony, and the amount of speech were studied in couple therapy. Methods: Data comprised 12 couple therapy cases (24 clients and 10 therapists working in pairs as co-therapists). Synchrony in electrodermal activity, head and body movement, and the amount of speech and simultaneous speech during the sessions were analyzed in 12 sessions at the start of couple therapy (all 72 dyads) and eight sessions at the end of therapy (48 dyads). Synchrony was calculated from cross-correlations using time lags and compared to segment-shuffled pseudo synchrony. The associations between the synchrony modalities and speech were analyzed using complex modeling (Mplus). Findings: Couple therapy participants' synchrony mostly occurred in-phase (positive synchrony). Anti-phase (negative) synchrony was more common in movement than in sympathetic nervous system activity. Synchrony in sympathetic nervous system activity only correlated with movement synchrony between the client-therapist dyads (r = 0.66 body synchrony, r = 0.59 head synchrony). Movement synchrony and the amount of speech correlated negatively between spouses (r = -0.62 body synchrony, r = -0.47 head synchrony) and co-therapists (r = -0.39 body synchrony, r = -0.28 head synchrony), meaning that the more time the dyad members talked during the session, the less bodily synchrony they exhibited. Conclusion: The different roles and relationships in couple therapy were associated with the extent to which synchrony modalities were linked with each other. In the relationship between clients and therapists, synchrony in arousal levels and movement "walked hand in hand", whereas in the other relationships (spouse or colleague) they were not linked. Generally, more talk time by the therapy participants was associated with anti-phase movement synchrony. If, as suggested, emotions prepare us for motor action, an important finding of this study is that sympathetic nervous system activity can also synchronize with that of others independently of motor action.

Cardiac cycle and respiration phase affect responses to the conditioned stimulus in young adults trained in trace eyeblink conditioning.

Rhythms of breathing and heartbeat are linked to each other as well as to the rhythms of the brain. Our recent studies suggest that presenting conditioned stimulus during expiration or during the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle facilitates neural processing of that stimulus and improves learning in a conditioning task. To date, it has not been examined whether using information from both respiration and cardiac cycle phases simultaneously allows even more efficient modulation of learning. Here, we studied whether the timing of the conditioned stimulus to different cardiorespiratory rhythm phase combinations affects learning in a conditioning task in healthy young adults. The results were consistent with previous reports: timing the conditioned stimulus to diastole during expiration was more beneficial for learning than timing it to systole during inspiration. Cardiac cycle phase seemed to explain most of this variation in learning at the behavioral level. Brain-evoked potentials (N1) elicited by the conditioned stimulus and recorded using electroencephalogram were larger when the conditioned stimulus was presented to diastole during expiration than when it was presented to systole during inspiration. Breathing phase explained the variation in the N1 amplitude. To conclude, our findings suggest that noninvasive monitoring of bodily rhythms combined with closed-loop control of stimulation can be used to promote learning in humans. The next step will be to test if performance can also be improved in humans with compromised cognitive ability, such as in older people with memory impairments.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We report, for the first time, that the rhythms of breathing and the beating of the heart have a phase combination that is indicative of a neural state beneficial for cognition. This suggests that bodily rhythms not only modulate cognition but that this phenomenon can also be noninvasively harnessed to improve learning in humans.

Measuring Public Speaking Anxiety: Self-report, behavioral, and physiological.

Self-reports are typically used to assess public speaking anxiety. In this study, we examined whether self-report, observer report, and behavioral and physiological reactivity were associated with each other during a speech challenge task. A total of 95 university students completed a self-report measure of public speaking anxiety before and after the speech challenge. Speech duration (i.e., behavioral measure), physiological reactivity, as well as speech performance evaluated by the participants and observers were also recorded. The results suggest that self-reported public speaking anxiety predicts speech duration, as well as speech quality, as rated by the participants themselves and observers. However, the physiological measures were not associated with self-reported anxiety during the speech task. Additionally, we observed that socially anxious participants underrate their speech performance in comparison to their observers' evaluations.

Challenges and added value of measuring embodied variables in psychotherapy.

Research on embodied aspects of clinical encounters is growing, but discussion on the premises of including embodied variables in empirical research is scarce. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that embodied aspects of psychotherapy interaction are vital in developing a therapeutic alliance, and these should be considered to better understand the change process in psychotherapy. However, the field is still debating which methods should be used and which features of the embodied aspects are relevant in the clinical context. The field lacks methodological consistency as well as a theoretical model. In the Relational Mind research project, we have studied the embodied aspects of interaction in the context of couple therapy for almost a decade and have gained experience with the positive and negative aspects of studying embodied variables in quantitative and qualitative studies. We have set out to develop the methodology (or procedures) for studying embodied variables in a multiperson setting, concentrating on interpersonal synchrony of sympathetic nervous system responses and movements, and we have strived to create methods for integrating information from different embodied modalities. In this narrative review, we share our experiences of the challenges and added value of studying embodied aspects in psychotherapy. The research field urgently needs an ongoing discussion of what researchers should take into consideration when studying the embodied aspects of interaction. We urge researchers to collaborate between research groups to jointly decide on the basic parameters of studies on the different embodied modalities of the research so that the individual researcher can become more aware of the impact the methodological choices have on their studies, results, and interpretations. We also see the use of embodied variables as having added value in the clinical work of psychotherapists, since it not only deepens our understanding about what is helpful in psychotherapy but will enable fine-tuning therapy processes to better suit clients who are verbally less fluent.

Nonverbal Synchrony in Couple Therapy Linked to Clients' Well-Being and the Therapeutic Alliance.

Nonverbal synchrony between individuals has a robust relation to the positive aspects of relationships. In psychotherapy, where talking is the cure, nonverbal synchrony has been related to a positive outcome of therapy and to a stronger therapeutic alliance between therapist and client in dyadic settings. Only a few studies have focused on nonverbal synchrony in multi-actor therapy conversations. Here, we studied the synchrony of head and body movements in couple therapy, with four participants present (spouses and two therapists). We analyzed more than 2000min of couple therapy videos from 11 couple therapy cases using Motion Energy Analysis and a Surrogate Synchrony (SUSY), a procedure used earlier in dyadic psychotherapy settings. SUSY was calculated for all six dyads per session, leading to synchrony computations for 66 different dyads. Significant synchrony occurred in all 29 analyzed sessions and between the majority of dyads. Complex models were used to determine the relations between nonverbal synchrony and the clients' well-being and all participants' evaluations of the therapeutic alliance. The clients' well-being was related to body synchronies in the sessions. Differences were found between the clients' and therapists' alliance evaluations: the clients' alliance evaluations were related to synchrony between both dyads of opposite gender, whereas the therapists' alliance evaluations were related to synchrony between dyads of the same gender, but opposite to themselves. With four participants present, our study introduces a new aspect of nonverbal synchrony, since as a dyad synchronizes, the other two participants are observing it. Nonverbal synchrony seems to be as important in couple therapy as in individual psychotherapy, but the presence of multiple participants makes the patterns more complex.

Irradiation of the head reduces adult hippocampal neurogenesis and impairs spatial memory, but leaves overall health intact in rats.

Treatment of brain cancer, glioma, can cause cognitive impairment as a side-effect, possibly because it disrupts the integrity of the hippocampus, a structure vital for normal memory. Radiotherapy is commonly used to treat glioma, but the effects of irradiation on the brain are still poorly understood, and other biological effects have not been extensively studied. Here, we exposed healthy adult male rats to moderate-dose irradiation of the head. We found no effect of irradiation on systemic inflammation, weight gain or gut microbiota diversity, although it increased the abundance of Bacteroidaceae family, namely Bacteroides genus in the gut microbiota. Irradiation had no effect on long-term potentiation in the CA3-CA1 synapse or endogenous hippocampal electrophysiology, but it did reduce adult hippocampal neurogenesis and impaired short-term spatial recognition memory. However, no overall cognitive impairment was observed. To summarize, our results suggest that in adult male rats head irradiation does not compromise health or cognition overall even though the number of new, adult-born hippocampal neurons is decreased. Thus, the sole effects of head irradiation on the body, brain and cognition might be less harmful than previously thought, and the cognitive decline experienced by cancer patients might originate from physiological and mental effects of the disease itself. Therefore, to increase the translational value of animal studies, the effects of irradiation should be studied together with cancer, in older animals, using varying irradiation protocols and doses.

Deviance detection in sound frequency in simple and complex sounds in urethane-anesthetized rats.

Mismatch negativity (MMN), which is an electrophysiological response demonstrated in humans and animals, reflects memory-based deviance detection in a series of sounds. However, only a few studies on rodents have used control conditions that were sufficient in eliminating confounding factors that could also explain differential responses to deviant sounds. Furthermore, it is unclear if change detection occurs similarly for sinusoidal and complex sounds. In this study, we investigated frequency change detection in urethane-anesthetized rats by recording local-field potentials from the dura above the auditory cortex. We studied change detection in sinusoidal and complex sounds in a series of experiments, controlling for sound frequency, probability, and pattern in a series of sounds. For sinusoidal sounds, the MMN controlled for frequency, adaptation, and pattern, was elicited at approximately 200 ms onset latency. For complex sounds, the MMN controlled for frequency and adaptation, was elicited at 60 ms onset latency. Sound frequency affected the differential responses. MMN amplitude was larger for the sinusoidal sounds than for the complex sounds. These findings indicate the importance of controlling for sound frequency and stimulus probabilities, which have not been fully controlled for in most previous animal and human studies. Future studies should confirm the preference for sinusoidal sounds over complex sounds in rats.

Most hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells in rabbits increase firing during awake sharp-wave ripples and some do so in response to external stimulation and theta.

Hippocampus forms neural representations of real-life events including multimodal information of spatial and temporal context. These representations, i.e., organized sequences of neuronal firing, are repeated during following rest and sleep, especially when so-called sharp-wave ripples (SPW-Rs) characterize hippocampal local field potentials. This SPW-R -related replay is thought to underlie memory consolidation. Here, we set out to explore how hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells respond to the conditioned stimulus during trace eyeblink conditioning and how these responses manifest during SPW-Rs in awake adult female New Zealand White rabbits. Based on reports in rodents, we expected SPW-Rs to take place in bursts, possibly according to a slow endogenous rhythm. In awake rabbits, half of all SPW-Rs took place in bursts, but no endogenous slow rhythm appeared. Conditioning trials suppressed SPW-Rs while increasing theta for a period of several seconds. As expected based on previous findings, only a quarter of the putative CA1 pyramidal cells increased firing in response to the conditioned stimulus. Compared with other cells, rate-increasing cells were more active during spontaneous epochs of hippocampal theta while response profile during conditioning did not affect firing during SPW-Rs. Taken together, CA1 pyramidal cell firing during SPW-Rs is not limited to cells that fired during the preceding experience. Furthermore, the importance of possible reactivations taking place during theta epochs on memory consolidation warrants further investigation.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We studied hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta and CA1 pyramidal cell activity during trace eyeblink conditioning in rabbits. Conditioning trials suppressed ripples while increasing theta for a period of several seconds. A quarter of the cells increased firing in response to the conditioned stimulus and fired extensively during endogenous theta as well as ripples. The role of endogenous theta epochs in off-line memory consolidation should be studied further.

Sympathetic nervous system synchrony: An exploratory study of its relationship with the therapeutic alliance and outcome in couple therapy.

In previous research, we found that sympathetic nervous system synchrony, measured via electrodermal activity (EDA), occurs between participants at the start of couple therapy. The aim now was to test whether this synchrony changes during the therapy process, and how any changes may be related to clients' and therapists' evaluations of the working alliance, and the outcome of therapy. Twelve different couple therapy processes were analyzed (24 clients, plus 10 therapists, working in pairs; hence, 4 persons per session) using EDA concordance indices and questionnaires (Outcome Rating Scale, Session Rating Scale, and Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure). EDA synchrony between the couples increased from the beginning to the end of therapy. This seemed to be connected to a positive linear trend in female clients' well-being during the therapy process. There were no statistically significant changes in the EDA synchrony between the cotherapists, or between the clients and the therapists. We found specific changes in the EDA synchrony to be related to changes in the therapeutic alliance, and/or changes in the clients' well-being. Heightened EDA synchrony was frequently related to a better outcome; nevertheless, there was one instance in which decreasing synchrony seemed to be more beneficial. It appears that couple therapy can bring spouses closer together also on a physiological level, which could be especially important for the well-being of women. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Breathe out and learn: Expiration-contingent stimulus presentation facilitates associative learning in trace eyeblink conditioning.

Rhythmic variation in heart rate and respiratory pattern are coupled in a way that optimizes the level of oxygen in the blood stream of the lungs and the body as well as saves energy in pulmonary gas exchange. It has been suggested that the cardiac cycle and respiratory pattern are coupled to neural oscillations of the brain. Yet, studies on how this rhythmic coupling is related to behavior are scarce. There is some evidence that, for example, the phase of respiration affects memory retrieval and the electrophysiological oscillatory state of the limbic system. It is also known that the phase of the cardiac cycle and hippocampal electrophysiological oscillations alone affect learning. Here, we studied whether the timing of training trials to different phases of respiration affects learning trace eyeblink conditioning in healthy adult humans. Trials consisting of a neutral conditioned stimulus (200-ms tone) and a slightly aversive unconditioned stimulus (100-ms air puff toward the eye), presented with a 600-ms trace interval, were timed to either inspiration or expiration. A control group was trained regardless of respiratory phase. We found that, at the end of training, the rate of conditioned responses was higher in the group trained at expiration than it was in the other two groups. That is, brain state seems to fluctuate as a function of respiratory rhythm, and this fluctuation is also behaviorally relevant, exerting its effect on, at the least, a simple form of associative learning.

The Added Value of Studying Embodied Responses in Couple Therapy Research: A Case Study.

This article reports on the added value of embodied responses identified through sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity in couple therapy research. It focuses on moments of change and the timing of therapeutic interventions or therapeutic moves in a couple therapy session. The data for this single-case study comprise couple therapy process videotapes recorded in a multi-camera setting, and measurements of participants' SNS activity. The voluntary participants were a marital couple in their late thirties and two middle-aged male psychotherapists. The division into topic segments showed how the key issue of seeking help, which was found to comprise three separate components, was repeatedly dealt with in the session. SNS activity showed different degrees of synchronization between the couple, between the therapists, and between the couple and therapists during the dialogue pertaining to these three components. The issue of timing emerged as a complex, even ambivalent, phenomenon. Arousal in the therapists was in line with their therapeutic activity, whereas in the clients it was more anticipatory. The approach used here rendered visible some of the intensity that therapeutic dialogue can generate when dealing with issues of relationship change in the couple context and showed how this intensity can be dialogically regulated in the therapeutic system.

Este artículo informa sobre el valor agregado de las respuestas materializadas reconocidas mediante la actividad del sistema nervioso simpático (SNS) en la investigación sobre la terapia de pareja. Se centra en los momentos de cambio y en la elección del momento oportuno de las intervenciones terapéuticas o en los pasos terapéuticos de una sesión de terapia de pareja. Los datos para este estudio de un solo caso comprenden las cintas de vídeo del proceso de terapia de pareja grabadas en un entorno con varias cámaras y las mediciones de la actividad del SNS de los participantes. Los participantes voluntarios fueron un matrimonio de treintaimuchos y dos psicoterapeutas hombres de mediana edad. La división en segmentos por temas demostró cómo el asunto clave de buscar ayuda, que ahora sabemos que consta de tres componentes individuales, se trató repetidamente en la sesión. La actividad del SNS demostró diferentes grados de sincronización entre la pareja, entre los terapeutas, y entre la pareja y los terapeutas durante el diálogo relativo a estos tres componentes. La cuestión de la elección del momento oportuno surgió como un fenómeno complejo e incluso ambivalente. La agitación en los terapeutas fue acorde con su actividad terapéutica, mientras que en los pacientes fue más anticipatoria. El enfoque utilizado aquí dejó ver algo de la intensidad que puede generar el diálogo terapéutico cuando se tratan cuestiones de cambio en las relaciones en el contexto de la pareja y demostró cómo esta intensidad puede regularse dialógicamente en el sistema terapéutico.

Dentate spikes and learning: disrupting hippocampal function during memory consolidation can improve pattern separation.

Hippocampal dentate spikes (DSs) are short-duration, large-amplitude fluctuations in hilar local field potentials and take place while resting and sleeping. During DSs, dentate gyrus granule cells increase firing while CA1 pyramidal cells decrease firing. Recent findings suggest DSs play a significant role in memory consolidation after training on a hippocampus-dependent, nonspatial associative learning task. Here, we aimed to find out whether DSs are important in other types of hippocampus-dependent learning tasks as well. To this end, we trained adult male Sprague-Dawley rats in a spatial reference memory task, a fixed interval task, and a pattern separation task. During a rest period immediately after each training session, we either let neural activity to take place as usual, timed electrical stimulation of the ventral hippocampal commissure (vHC) to immediately follow DSs, or applied the vHC stimulation during a random neural state. We found no effect of vHC stimulation on performance in the spatial reference memory task or in the fixed interval task. Surprisingly, vHC stimulation, especially contingent on DSs, improved performance in the pattern separation task. In conclusion, the behavioral relevance of hippocampal processing and DSs seems to depend on the task at hand. It could be that in an intact brain, offline memory consolidation by default involves associating neural representations of temporally separate but related events. In some cases this might be beneficial for adaptive behavior in the future (associative learning), while in other cases it might not (pattern separation). NEW & NOTEWORTHY The behavioral relevance of dentate spikes seems to depend on the learning task at hand. We suggest that dentate spikes are related to associating neural representations of temporally separate but related events within the dentate gyrus. In some cases this might be beneficial for adaptive behavior in the future (associative learning), while in other cases it might not (pattern separation).

The Relational Mind in Couple Therapy: A Bateson-Inspired View of Human Life as an Embodied Stream.

Research on human intersubjectivity has found that humans participate in a dialogue throughout their life, and that this is manifested not only via language, but also nonverbally, with the entire body. Such an understanding of human life has brought into focus some basic systemic ideas concerning the human relational mind. For Gregory Bateson, the mind works as a system, formed from components that are in continuous interaction with each other. In our Relational Mind research project, we followed twelve couple therapy processes involving two therapists per session, looking at the ways in which the four participants attuned to each other with their bodies, including their autonomic nervous system activity. Using observations from the project, we here describe the ways through which the relational and embodied mind can be realized in a couple therapy setting.

Learning by heart: cardiac cycle reveals an effective time window for learning.

Cardiac cycle phase is known to modulate processing of simple sensory information. This effect of the heartbeat on brain function is likely exerted via baroreceptors, the neurons sensitive for changes in blood pressure. From baroreceptors, the signal is conveyed all the way to the forebrain and the medial prefrontal cortex. In the two experiments reported, we examined whether learning, as a more complex form of cognition, can be modulated by the cardiac cycle phase. Human participants ( experiment 1) and rabbits ( experiment 2) were trained in trace eyeblink conditioning while neural activity was recorded. The conditioned stimulus was presented contingently with either the systolic or diastolic phase of the cycle. The tone used as the conditioned stimulus evoked amplified responses in both humans (electroencephalogram from "vertex," Cz) and rabbits (hippocampal CA1 local field potential) when its onset was timed at systole. In humans, the cardiac cycle phase did not affect learning, but rabbits trained at diastole learned significantly better than those trained at a random phase of the cardiac cycle. In summary, our results suggest that neural processing of external stimuli and also learning can be affected by targeting stimuli on the basis of cardiac cycle phase. These findings might be useful in applications aimed at maximizing or minimizing the effects of external stimulation. NEW & NOTEWORTHY It has been shown that rapid changes in bodily states modulate neural processing of external stimulus in brain. In this study, we show that modulation of neural processing of external stimulus and learning about it depends on the phase of the cardiac cycle. This is a novel finding that can be applied to optimize associative learning.