0000000000999369
AUTHOR
Xueqiao Li
Magnetoencephalography Responses to Unpredictable and Predictable Rare Somatosensory Stimuli in Healthy Adult Humans
Mismatch brain responses to unpredicted rare stimuli are suggested to be a neural indicator of prediction error, but this has rarely been studied in the somatosensory modality. Here, we investigated how the brain responds to unpredictable and predictable rare events. Magnetoencephalography responses were measured in adults frequently presented with somatosensory stimuli (FRE) that were occasionally replaced by two consecutively presented rare stimuli [unpredictable rare stimulus (UR) and predictable rare stimulus (PR); p = 0.1 for each]. The FRE and PR were electrical stimulations administered to either the little finger or the forefinger in a counterbalanced manner between the two conditio…
The effect of sad mood on early sensory event-related potentials to task-irrelevant faces
It has been shown that the perceiver's mood affects the perception of emotional faces, but it is not known how mood affects preattentive brain responses to emotional facial expressions. To examine the question, we experimentally induced sad and neutral mood in healthy adults before presenting them with task-irrelevant pictures of faces while an electroencephalography was recorded. Sad, happy, and neutral faces were presented to the participants in an ignore oddball condition. Differential responses (emotional – neutral) for the P1, N170, and P2 amplitudes were extracted and compared between neutral and sad mood conditions. Emotional facial expressions modulated all the components, and an in…
Pain modulates early sensory brain responses to task‐irrelevant emotional faces
Background Pain can have a significant impact on an individual's life, as it has both cognitive and affective consequences. However, our understanding of how pain affects social cognition is limited. Previous studies have shown that pain, as an alarm stimulus, can disrupt cognitive processing when focal attention is required, but whether pain also affects task-irrelevant perceptual processing is unclear. Methods We examined the effect of laboratory-induced pain on event-related potentials (ERPs) to neutral, sad, and happy faces before, during, and after a cold pressor pain. ERPs reflecting different stages of visual processing (P1, N170, and P2) were analyzed. Results Pain decreased the P1 …
Event-Related Potentials to Changes in Sound Intensity Demonstrate Alterations in Brain Function Related to Depression and Aging
Measures of the brain’s automatic electrophysiological responses to sounds represent a potential tool for identifying age- and depression-related neural markers. However, these markers have rarely been studied related to aging and depression within one study. Here, we investigated auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in the brain that may show different alterations related to aging and depression. We used an oddball condition employing changes in sound intensity to investigate: (i) sound intensity dependence; (ii) sensory gating; and (iii) change detection, all within a single paradigm. The ERPs of younger (18–40 years) and older (62–80 years) depressed female participants and age-match…
Multi-modality of polysomnography signals’ fusion for automatic sleep scoring
Abstract Objective The study aims to develop an automatic sleep scoring method by fusing different polysomnography (PSG) signals and further to investigate PSG signals’ contribution to the scoring result. Methods Eight combinations of four modalities of PSG signals, namely electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), electromyogram (EMG), and electrocardiogram (ECG) were considered to find the optimal fusion of PSG signals. A total of 232 features, covering statistical characters, frequency characters, time-frequency characters, fractal characters, entropy characters and nonlinear characters, were derived from these PSG signals. To select the optimal features for each signal fusion, …
Multi-modality of polysomnography signals’ fusion for automatic sleep scoring
Objective: The study aims to develop an automatic sleep scoring method by fusing different polysomnography (PSG) signals and further to investigate PSG signals’ contribution to the scoring result. Methods: Eight combinations of four modalities of PSG signals, namely electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), electromyogram (EMG), and electrocardiogram (ECG) were considered to find the optimal fusion of PSG signals. A total of 232 features, covering statistical characters, frequency characters, time-frequency characters, fractal characters, entropy characters and nonlinear characters, were derived from these PSG signals. To select the optimal features for each signal fusion, four wi…
Somatosensory Deviance Detection ERPs and Their Relationship to Analogous Auditory ERPs and Interoceptive Accuracy
Abstract. Automatic deviance detection has been widely explored in terms of mismatch responses (mismatch negativity or mismatch response) and P3a components of event-related potentials (ERPs) under a predictive coding framework; however, the somatosensory mismatch response has been investigated less often regarding the different types of changes than its auditory counterpart. It is not known whether the deviance detection responses from different modalities correlate, reflecting a general prediction error mechanism of the central nervous system. Furthermore, interoceptive functions have been associated with predictive coding theory, but whether interoceptive accuracy correlates with devian…
Sad and fearful face distractors do not consume working memory resources in depressed adults
Previous studies have shown that task-irrelevant threatening faces (e.g., fearful faces) are difficult to filter from visual working memory (VWM; Stout et al., 2013). What is not known, however, is whether non-threatening negative faces (e.g., sad faces) are also difficult to filter and whether depressive symptoms affect filtering ability. We used a color-change detection task to test whether task-irrelevant sad and fearful face distractors could be filtered by healthy participants and by depressed participants. The groups differed in their filtering ability, as indicated by the contralateral delay activity, a specific ERP index for the number of objects stored in the VWM during the mainten…
Electrical brain activity and facial electromyography responses to irony in dysphoric and non-dysphoric participants
We studied irony comprehension and emotional reactions to irony in dysphoric and control participants. Electroencephalography (EEG) and facial electromyography (EMG) were measured when spoken conversations were presented with pictures that provided either congruent (non-ironic) or incongruent (ironic) contexts. In a separate session, participants evaluated the congruency and valence of the stimuli. While both groups rated ironic stimuli funnier than non-ironic stimuli, the control group rated all the stimuli funnier than the dysphoric group. N400-like activity, P600, and EMG activity indicating smiling were larger after the ironic stimuli than the non-ironic stimuli for both groups. Further…
Decreased intersubject synchrony in dynamic valence ratings of sad movie contents in dysphoric individuals
Emotional reactions to movies are typically similar between people. However, depressive symptoms decrease synchrony in brain responses. Less is known about the effect of depressive symptoms on intersubject synchrony in conscious stimulus-related processing. In this study, we presented amusing, sad and fearful movie clips to dysphoric individuals (those with elevated depressive symptoms) and control participants to dynamically rate the clips’ valences (positive vs. negative). We analysed both the valence ratings’ mean values and intersubject correlation (ISC). We used electrodermal activity (EDA) to complement the measurement in a separate session. There were no group differences in either t…
Measuring the Task Induced Oscillatory Brain Activity Using Tensor Decomposition
The characterization of dynamic electrophysiological brain activity, which form and dissolve in order to support ongoing cognitive function, is one of the most important goals in neuroscience. Here, we introduce a method with tensor decomposition for measuring the task-induced oscillations in the human brain using electroencephalography (EEG). The time frequency representation of source-reconstructed singletrail EEG data constructed a third-order tensor with three factors of time ∗ trails, frequency and source points. We then used a non-negative Canonical Polyadic decomposition (NCPD) to identify the temporal, spectral and spatial changes in electrophysiological brain activity. We validate …
Automatic Processing of Changes in Facial Emotions in Dysphoria: A Magnetoencephalography Study
It is not known to what extent the automatic encoding and change detection of peripherally presented facial emotion is altered in dysphoria. The negative bias in automatic face processing in particular has rarely been studied. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record automatic brain responses to happy and sad faces in dysphoric (Beck’s Depression Inventory ≥ 13) and control participants. Stimuli were presented in a passive oddball condition, which allowed potential negative bias in dysphoria at different stages of face processing (M100, M170, and M300) and alterations of change detection (visual mismatch negativity, vMMN) to be investigated. The magnetic counterpart of the vMMN was el…