Changes in the choice motive and emotional perception of chocolates in response to stress.

Although chocolates are often chosen for sensory pleasure, they are also selected to enhance mood and relieve emotional stress, or potentially chosen for its perceived health benefits if stress adversely affects physical well-being. This study aimed to investigate whether emotional stress influenced the motivations behind chocolate selection, subsequent liking, and emotional response. Participants were divided into a control group (n = 76) and a group with induced acute stress (n = 74). Stimuli were presented as dark chocolate packaging, each evoking sensory appeal, health, and emotional stress relief. Participants chose one stimulus from three options that they were most inclined to consume and evaluated the overall liking and emotional attributes of the stimuli. They also rated the overall liking and emotional attributes of three types of chocolates, each identical but paired with distinct stimuli. Their food attitudes were also assessed. Stress did not change the choice of stimuli, indicating that stress did not influence the motivation for chocolate selection. Instead, the choice of stimuli aligned with participants' food attitudes; those favoring sensory appeal and emotional stress relief prioritized pleasure in their usual food choices. Stress tended to increase liking and chocolate-associated positive emotions with sensory appeal, as opposed to others, to immediately alleviate negative emotions. The most robust motivation to consume chocolates was sensory pleasure, irrespective of stress, because of a preestablished association between sensory pleasure and mood enhancement.

The perceived catchiness of music affects the experience of groove.

Catchiness and groove are common phenomena when listening to popular music. Catchiness may be a potential factor for experiencing groove but quantitative evidence for such a relationship is missing. To examine whether and how catchiness influences a key component of groove-the pleasurable urge to move to music (PLUMM)-we conducted a listening experiment with 450 participants and 240 short popular music clips of drum patterns, bass lines or keys/guitar parts. We found four main results: (1) catchiness as measured in a recognition task was only weakly associated with participants' perceived catchiness of music. We showed that perceived catchiness is multi-dimensional, subjective, and strongly associated with pleasure. (2) We found a sizeable positive relationship between PLUMM and perceived catchiness. (3) However, the relationship is complex, as further analysis showed that pleasure suppresses perceived catchiness' effect on the urge to move. (4) We compared common factors that promote perceived catchiness and PLUMM and found that listener-related variables contributed similarly, while the effects of musical content diverged. Overall, our data suggests music perceived as catchy is likely to foster groove experiences.

Pleasurable and problematic receptive anal intercourse and diseases of the colon, rectum and anus.

The ability to experience pleasurable sexual activity is important for human health. Receptive anal intercourse (RAI) is a common, though frequently stigmatized, pleasurable sexual activity. Little is known about how diseases of the colon, rectum, and anus and their treatments affect RAI. Engaging in RAI with gastrointestinal disease can be difficult due to the unpredictability of symptoms and treatment-related toxic effects. Patients might experience sphincter hypertonicity, gastrointestinal symptom-specific anxiety, altered pelvic blood flow from structural disorders, decreased sensation from cancer-directed therapies or body image issues from stoma creation. These can result in problematic RAI - encompassing anodyspareunia (painful RAI), arousal dysfunction, orgasm dysfunction and decreased sexual desire. Therapeutic strategies for problematic RAI in patients living with gastrointestinal diseases and/or treatment-related dysfunction include pelvic floor muscle strengthening and stretching, psychological interventions, and restorative devices. Providing health-care professionals with a framework to discuss pleasurable RAI and diagnose problematic RAI can help improve patient outcomes. Normalizing RAI, affirming pleasure from RAI and acknowledging that the gastrointestinal system is involved in sexual pleasure, sexual function and sexual health will help transform the scientific paradigm of sexual health to one that is more just and equitable.

Predictive coding in musical anhedonia: A study of groove.

Groove, or the pleasurable urge to move to music, offers unique insight into the relationship between emotion and action. The predictive coding of music model posits that groove is linked to predictions of music formed over time, with stimuli of moderate complexity rated as most pleasurable and likely to engender movement. At the same time, listeners vary in the pleasure they derive from music listening: individuals with musical anhedonia report reduced pleasure during music listening despite no impairments in music perception and no general anhedonia. Little is known about musical anhedonics' subjective experience of groove. Here we examined the relationship between groove and music reward sensitivity. Participants (n = 287) heard drum-breaks that varied in perceived complexity, and rated each for pleasure and wanting to move. Musical anhedonics (n = 13) had significantly lower ratings compared to controls (n = 13) matched on music perception abilities and general anhedonia. However, both groups demonstrated the classic inverted-U relationship between ratings of pleasure & move and stimulus complexity, with ratings peaking for intermediately complex stimuli. Across our entire sample, pleasure ratings were most strongly related with music reward sensitivity for highly complex stimuli (i.e., there was an interaction between music reward sensitivity and stimulus complexity). Finally, the sensorimotor subscale of music reward was uniquely associated with move, but not pleasure, ratings above and beyond the five other dimensions of musical reward. Results highlight the multidimensional nature of reward sensitivity and suggest that pleasure and wanting to move are driven by overlapping but separable mechanisms.

Remixing Preferences for Western Instrumental Classical Music of Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users.

For people with profound hearing loss, a cochlear implant (CI) is able to provide access to sounds that support speech perception. With current technology, most CI users obtain very good speech understanding in quiet listening environments. However, many CI users still struggle when listening to music. Efforts have been made to preprocess music for CI users and improve their music enjoyment. This work investigates potential modifications of instrumental music to make it more accessible for CI users. For this purpose, we used two datasets with varying complexity and containing individual tracks of instrumental music. The first dataset contained trios and it was newly created and synthesized for this study. The second dataset contained orchestral music with a large number of instruments. Bilateral CI users and normal hearing listeners were asked to remix the multitracks grouped into melody, bass, accompaniment, and percussion. Remixes could be performed in the amplitude, spatial, and spectral domains. Results showed that CI users preferred tracks being panned toward the right side, especially the percussion component. When CI users were grouped into frequent or occasional music listeners, significant differences in remixing preferences in all domains were observed.

Liking music with and without sadness: Testing the direct effect hypothesis of pleasurable negative emotion.

Negative emotion evoked in listeners of music can produce intense pleasure, but we do not fully understand why. The present study addressed the question by asking participants (n = 50) to self-select a piece of sadness-evoking music that was loved. The key part of the study asked participants to imagine that the felt sadness could be removed. Overall participants reported performing the task successfully. They also indicated that the removal of the sadness reduced their liking of the music, and 82% of participants reported that the evoked sadness also adds to the enjoyment of the music. The study provided evidence for a "Direct effect hypothesis", which draws on the multicomponent model of emotion, where a component of the negative emotion is experienced as positive during music (and other aesthetic) experiences. Earlier evidence of a mediator, such as 'being moved', as the source of enjoyment was reinterpreted in light of the new findings. Instead, the present study applied a semantic overlap explanation, arguing that sadness primes emotions that share meaning with sadness, such as being-moved. The priming occurs if the overlap in meaning is sufficient. The degree of semantic overlap was defined empirically. The present study therefore suggests that mediator-based explanations need to be treated with caution both as a finding of the study, and because of analytic limitations in earlier research that are discussed in the paper.

Comparison of enjoyment and energy expenditure of exergame with and without blood flow restriction in men and women.

This study compared the effects of blood flow restriction (BFR) on intensity and perceived enjoyment during an exergame. Fourteen healthy young participants engaged in a boxing exergame for 20 min, with or without BFR, across two sessions. Perceived enjoyment levels were assessed using the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale. Heart rate was monitored, and energy expenditure (EE) during exercise was calculated. A mixed model analysis of variance with repeated measures was used to evaluate differences in EE and enjoyment between exergame conditions (with and without BFR) as well as the interaction effects of these protocols with gender. Although not statistically significant, perceived enjoyment decreased with BFR inclusion for both genders. No significant differences were observed between men and women for both protocols. Regarding EE, there was no significant difference between the two groups (with and without BFR). However, a significant main effect of gender was found, with men exhibiting higher EE values in both protocols compared to women. In conclusion, exergames incorporating BFR impact perceptual responses, particularly perceived enjoyment. Furthermore, significant gender differences in EE were found, with men displaying higher values.

Building a science of human pleasure, meaning making, and flourishing.

"Supporting human flourishing" is a goal of governments and societies, yet the construct may appear hard to define. We discuss the emerging science of pleasure and flourishing, insights into the brain mechanisms of meaning making and thriving, and the potential for interdisciplinary studies to advance this promising scientific field.

Children's odor pleasantness ratings may not differ according to pubertal status: Preliminary results from a sample of 11-14-year-old Czech children.

Puberty tends to be viewed as a "turning point" in hedonic perception of body odor (BO)-related smells. The pubertal stage, a potential proxy for the underlying physiological changes, may contribute to variation in odor hedonic perception. Other potential modulators of odor hedonics are general semantic knowledge about odors (which also tends to be subsumed under the term "age") and perceived odor intensity. The present cross-sectional study examined differences in hedonic odor perception across puberty in 205 Czech children aged 11-14 (89 boys). We investigated whether children differ in the hedonic appraisal of BO-related (16-androstenes and castoreum control), but also food and non-food odors according to their pubertal (penis/breast and pubic hair) development and general semantic knowledge about odors (operationalized as odor identification), controlling for age and perceived odor intensity. As a subsidiary aim, we examined variation in odor identification. We asked the children to self-stage themselves using drawings depicting Tanner's penis/breast and pubic hair stages of pubertal development, estimated their general semantic knowledge about odors with a Sniffin' Sticks identification test, and obtained their pleasantness and intensity ratings of body odor-related, food, a non-food smells. We found that the participants' ratings of the 16-androstenes and those of the perceptually similar odor of castoreum differed according to perceived intensity and, in the latter case, in boys vs. girls as well, but there were no influences of pubertal status or odor identification on the perceived pleasantness. Similarly, hedonic appraisal of non-food (but not food) odors was only influenced by perceived intensity. Regarding odor identification, differences between boys and girls were limited to younger children and did not become more marked throughout puberty. Perceived pleasantness of odors, irrespective of whether they are associated with body smells, food, or other, does not appear to vary across puberty, and boys and girls seem to achieve similar levels of semantic odor knowledge as they grow up.

Elevator music as a tool for the quantitative characterization of reward.

While certain musical genres and songs are widely popular, there is still large variability in the music that individuals find rewarding or emotional, even among those with a similar musical enculturation. Interestingly, there is one Western genre that is intended to attract minimal attention and evoke a mild emotional response: elevator music. In a series of behavioral experiments, we show that elevator music consistently elicits low pleasure and surprise. Participants reported elevator music as being less pleasurable than music from popular genres, even when participants did not regularly listen to the comparison genre. Participants reported elevator music to be familiar even when they had not explicitly heard the presented song before. Computational and behavioral measures of surprisal showed that elevator music was less surprising, and thus more predictable, than other well-known genres. Elevator music covers of popular songs were rated as less pleasurable, surprising, and arousing than their original counterparts. Finally, we used elevator music as a control for self-selected rewarding songs in a proof-of-concept physiological (electrodermal activity and piloerection) experiment. Our results suggest that elevator music elicits low emotional responses consistently across Western music listeners, making it a unique control stimulus for studying musical novelty, pleasure, and surprise.

Less bang for my buck: Diminished anticipated enjoyment contributes to dysphoria-linked deficit in activity behavioural engagement choice.

This study experimentally investigated the role of anticipated enjoyment and effort in mediating dysphoria-related deficit in activity engagement behavioural choice. Using a novel activity information processing task (about a fictional "new" Nintendo Wii sports game called "Tornado Ball"), N = 249 participants (n = 95 High Dysphoria; n = 154 Low Dysphoria) were presented information about the benefits (enjoyable features) and costs (mental and physical effort barriers) as product reviews from another player. The order of cost vs. benefit information was manipulated such that participants either heard cost information before benefit information, or vice versa. They then rated what their anticipated enjoyment and effort will be if they were to play Tornado Ball, before being given the opportunity to choose to try it themselves or not. The High Dysphoria group reported lower anticipated enjoyment (but not higher effort) relative to the Low Dysphoria group, but only when cost information was presented first. Importantly, a moderated mediation showed that the High Dysphoria group reported lower tendency to choose activity engagement (game play) as a function of having lower anticipated enjoyment, but only when cost information was presented first. The present finding indicate that reduced anticipated enjoyment may causally contribute to dysphoria-linked deficits in activity engagement behavioural choice.

Guided recall of positive autobiographical memories increases anticipated pleasure and psychological resources, and reduces depressive symptoms: a replication and extension of a randomised controlled trial of brief positive cognitive-reminiscence therapy.

Reminiscence-based interventions focus on recalling autobiographical memories and reflective reasoning to develop a healthy and adaptive view of oneself and one's life. This study aimed to replicate the effects of a three-session, group-based, positive-memory version of cognitive-reminiscence therapy (CRT) on psychological resources and mental well-being and extend the findings to anticipated pleasure. The participants (N = 75, Mage = 43.7 (SD = 16.7), 60% females) were randomised to CRT or control group. Anticipated pleasure, psychological resources (schemas of positive self-esteem, self-efficacy, meaning in life, optimism), mental well-being (depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms) and theorised change processes (automatic negative thoughts, awareness of narrative identity) were assessed. Relative to the control group, the CRT group reported significantly higher anticipated pleasure (d = 0.76-0.93) and psychological resources of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and optimism (d's = 0.58-0.99) at post-CRT and follow-up, and lower depressive symptoms post-CRT and at follow-up (d = 0.56-0.67). Findings on meaning in life and negative automatic thinking were partially replicated. This study replicates findings of the effectiveness of this intervention for improving psychological resources such as self-worth, confidence and optimism and depressive symptoms, and indicates additional effects on anticipated pleasure. CRT may serve as a standalone intervention, or as an adjunct "memory booster" for interventions focused on future thinking and related anticipated reward.

Examining the effects of increasing then decreasing exercise intensity within a session of aerobic exercise.

Recent studies have examined the relations between the slope of pleasure experienced during exercise and remembered pleasure, forecasted pleasure, and enjoyment. OBJECTIVES: This study advances this line of research by examining the effects of exposing participants to exercise that increases in intensity and then decreases in intensity. METHODS: In a within-subjects design, participants completed three exercise sessions matched for total and average work. One session steadily increased in intensity, another steadily decreased in intensity, and a third increased-then-decreased in intensity. Remembered pleasure, forecasted pleasure, and exercise enjoyment served as primary outcome variables. RESULTS: Remembered pleasure, forecasted pleasure, and enjoyment did not differ between conditions. Remembered pleasure was positively associated with mean experienced pleasure, the overall slope of pleasure during the exercise session, affect experienced at the end of exercise, forecasted pleasure, accomplishment, and enjoyment. CONCLUSIONS: These data add to a growing literature on the effects of patterns of exercise intensity on affective responses to exercise. The results are discussed in context of previous and more recent research.

Creating optimally safe and enjoyable youth sporting experiences within the United Kingdom.

Considering recent research and reports, much attention has been given to understanding and addressing issues of abuse in sport. Similarly, attention has been given to enhancing children's psychosocial experiences within sport. However, to-date, consideration of these two elements together, that is minimising abuse and enhancing enjoyment, has been minimal. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to explore perceptions of the process through which an optimally safe and enjoyable sporting experience can be created for young people. A Straussian grounded theory methodology was used to develop a substantive theory detailing the process through which an optimally safe and enjoyable sporting experience is created for young people in sport. Interviews were conducted with 19 young people, six parents, nine coaches, and five individuals in safeguarding roles. The interviews were analysed through open and axial coding, followed by theoretical integration. The resultant theory highlighted that establishing positive relationships between all young people and key individuals in a physically and developmentally safe environment was a fundamental requirement for fostering an optimally safe and enjoyable sporting experience. Achieving this required consideration of factors both in the immediate and broad sporting context. Specifically, support from sports organisations, access to continuing professional development opportunities, and a network of safeguarding experts are required in the broader environment. While within the immediate sporting environment, visibly displayed and appropriately implemented safeguarding policies and procedures; open, honest, and respectful interactions; shared goals and expectations between parents, coaches, and young people, and; trusting and supportive friendships with shared experiences are required.

When Studying Affective Responses to Exercise, the Definition of "Intensity" Must Reference Homeostatic Perturbations: A Retort to Vollaard et al.

In articles on the methodology of studies investigating affective and enjoyment responses to high-intensity interval training, we noted that, occasionally, exercise conditions described as involving "high" intensity exhibited heart rates that were only as high as, or even lower than, heart rates recorded during comparator conditions described as being of "moderate" intensity. Drs. Vollaard, Metcalfe, Kinghorn, Jung, and Little suggest instead that exercise intensity in high-intensity interval-training studies can be defined in terms of percentages of peak workload. Although we maintain that defining exercise intensity in terms of percentages of maximal heart rate is a suboptimal way to quantify the degree of homeostatic perturbations in response to exercise, we are unconvinced that definitions of intensity relying solely on workload are appropriate for studies investigating affective and enjoyment responses to exercise. The reason is that affect is theorized to have evolved to relay information about homeostatic perturbations to consciousness.

Relationships among teacher enjoyment, emotional labor, and perceived student engagement: A daily diary approach.

The present daily diary study among 587 Canadian primary and secondary school teachers assessed teachers' genuine expression, faking, hiding of happiness and enthusiasm, and their daily associations with perceived student emotional and behavioral engagement. Moreover, we measured teachers' trait enjoyment before and after the diary study to examine whether teacher trait enjoyment predicted the use of emotional labor strategies that, in turn, were related to teachers' perceptions of their students' engagement. In addition, we examined whether perceived student engagement predicted future levels of teacher trait enjoyment. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling showed that, at the between-person level, teachers who had higher levels of trait enjoyment tended to spontaneously show their positive feelings to their students (ß = 0.381, p < .001), which was further positively related to student engagement (ß = 0.257, p < .001). In turn, teachers' perceptions of heightened student engagement led to even greater enjoyment in the future (ß = 0.134, p < .05). In contrast, teacher trait enjoyment was negatively related to faking (ß = -0.297, p < .001) and hiding positive emotions (ß = -0.130, p < .05), but was further unrelated to student engagement or future enjoyment. At the within-person level, genuine expression of positive emotions was positively related to student engagement (ß = 0.219, p < .001), faking was negatively related to student engagement (ß = -0.134, p < .001), and hiding was unrelated to student engagement.

Teacher support in language learning: a picture of the effects on language progress, academic immunity, and academic enjoyment.

Teacher support encompasses the provision of educational, instrumental, sentimental, or evaluative assistance by a teacher to a student, regardless of the setting. Learning a new language brings with it different ups and downs that may hinder the actual progress of the learners. The journey of learning may be made easier by supportive instructors. During the course of this inquiry, two groups (85 participants in total) including the experimental and control groups were chosen to gauge the influence of Teacher support in virtual instruction on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' progress, academic immunity, and academic enjoyment. In contrast to the experimental group (EG, n = 42), which had the chance to connect with a teacher in order to ask questions and get feedback plus the off-line education, the control group (CG, n = 44) was subjected to off-line instruction of language input (Top Notch 3). The status of the participants' language growth, immunity, and enjoyment was investigated both before and after the treatment. The findings of independent samples t-tests as well as the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that learners in EG did much better than their counterparts in CG. In addition, the ramifications and recommendations for potential future directions are analyzed.

Neural flip-flops I: Short-term memory.

The networks proposed here show how neurons can be connected to form flip-flops, the basic building blocks in sequential logic systems. The novel neural flip-flops (NFFs) are explicit, dynamic, and can generate known phenomena of short-term memory. For each network design, all neurons, connections, and types of synapses are shown explicitly. The neurons' operation depends only on explicitly stated, minimal properties of excitement and inhibition. This operation is dynamic in the sense that the level of neuron activity is the only cellular change, making the NFFs' operation consistent with the speed of most brain functions. Memory tests have shown that certain neurons fire continuously at a high frequency while information is held in short-term memory. These neurons exhibit seven characteristics associated with memory formation, retention, retrieval, termination, and errors. One of the neurons in each of the NFFs produces all of the characteristics. This neuron and a second neighboring neuron together predict eight unknown phenomena. These predictions can be tested by the same methods that led to the discovery of the first seven phenomena. NFFs, together with a decoder from a previous paper, suggest a resolution to the longstanding controversy of whether short-term memory depends on neurons firing persistently or in brief, coordinated bursts. Two novel NFFs are composed of two and four neurons. Their designs follow directly from a standard electronic flip-flop design by moving each negation symbol from one end of the connection to the other. This does not affect the logic of the network, but it changes the logic of each component to a logic function that can be implemented by a single neuron. This transformation is reversible and is apparently new to engineering as well as neuroscience.

Actions speak louder than words: modifications of the applied academic books and their reflections on students' academic success, academic enjoyment, and academic resilience.

Innovation is the process of renewing and updating a domain, a product, or a service by introducing new methods, introducing new techniques, or generating effective concepts to produce new value. Considering universal as well as local books, a teacher may find some sections that need modifications and supportive sections. These changes may have an impact on language learners' emotional and/or cognitive development. The purpose of this research was to shed light on the use of creative activities and their consequences on academic enjoyment, academic resilience, and academic performance. To that purpose, two groups of EFL (English as a foreign language) learners from Saudi Arabia (public schools) participated in this research and were requested to take pre-and post-tests to assess their level of academic engagement, academic resilience, and academic performance in language skills. According to the data analysis via the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in the control group in terms of academic enjoyment, resilience, and academic performance due to considered modifications in the applied academic books. The study's pedagogical ramifications are highlighted in the conclusion.