0000000001330738
AUTHOR
Markku Penttonen
Mismatch negativity (MMN) in freely-moving rats with several experimental controls.
Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a scalp-recorded electrical potential that occurs in humans in response to an auditory stimulus that defies previously established patterns of regularity. MMN amplitude is reduced in people with schizophrenia. In this study, we aimed to develop a robust and replicable rat model of MMN, as a platform for a more thorough understanding of the neurobiology underlying MMN. One of the major concerns for animal models of MMN is whether the rodent brain is capable of producing a human-like MMN, which is not a consequence of neural adaptation to repetitive stimuli. We therefore tested several methods that have been used to control for adaptation and differential exogenou…
Bilaterally recorded multiple-unit activity of the cingulate cortex during head turning conditioning with unilateral medial forebrain bundle stimulation.
Cats were conditioned to turn their heads using a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and medial forebrain bundle stimulation (MFB) unconditioned stimulus (US). The CS+ was delivered to one ear at a time, in random order, followed by the US. A tone of a different frequency was used as a CS-. The cats learned to respond differentially to the CSs showing head movements of greater acceleration to the CS+ than CS- over sessions. Bilateral recordings of cingulate cortex multiple-unit activity showed increased response amplitudes over sessions and larger responses in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the US. Since ipsilateral multiple-unit responses did not differ for the CSs, the asymmetry was probably d…
Soft Prosody and Embodied Attunement in Therapeutic Interaction: A Multimethod Case Study of a Moment of Change
This study focused on a moment of weeping in one psychotherapy case. The overall aim was toexplore the role of “soft prosody” in psychotherapy interaction—that is, the participants’ use ofpauses, a lower volume, slower rhythms, and softer intonation than in the surrounding speech. Amixed-method, micro-analytic perspective was applied to investigate (a) social interaction, includ-ing its verbal and nonverbal elements; (2) the participants’ bodily responses, including autonomicnervous system (ANS) measurements; and (3) the participants’ thoughts and feelings during thetherapy session, as reported in subsequent individual interviews. Soft prosody was observed to be animportant conversational t…
Hippocampal theta-band activity and trace eyeblink conditioning in rabbits.
The authors examined the relationship between hippocampal theta activity and trace eyeblink conditioning. Hippocampal electrophysiological local field potentials were recorded before, during, and after conditioning or explicitly unpaired training sessions in adult male New Zealand White rabbits. As expected, a high relative power of theta activity (theta ratio) in the hippocampus predicted faster acquisition of the conditioned response during trace conditioning but, contrary to previous results obtained using the delay paradigm, only in the initial stage of learning. The presentation of the conditioned stimulus overall elicited an increase in the hippocampal theta ratio. The theta ratio dec…
Significant Moments in a Couple Therapy Session: Towards the Integration of Different Modalities of Analysis
This chapter presents a couple therapy session from four different research perspectives: The verbal dialogue was analysed with the Dialogical Investigations of Happenings of Change method, the embodied reactions of each participant were analysed by examining the electrodermal activity of each participant, and nonverbal synchrony was observed between the participants. Stimulated Recall Interviews, conducted individually after the session, were used to gain insights on the participants’ thoughts and feelings concerning particular moments in the session. We wished to determine what could be learned from the embodied reactions of the participants in couple therapy, including whether the data o…
Hippocampal theta (3-8 Hz) activity during classical eyeblink conditioning in rabbits
In 1978, Berry and Thompson showed that the amount of theta (3–8 Hz) activity in the spontaneous hippocampal EEG predicted learning rate in subsequent eyeblink conditioning in rabbits. More recently, the absence of theta activity during the training trial has been shown to have a detrimental effect on learning rate. Here, we aimed to further explore the relationship between theta activity and classical eyeblink conditioning by determining how the relative power of hippocampal theta activity [theta/(theta + delta) ratio] changes during both unpaired control and paired training phases. We found that animals with a higher hippocampal theta ratio immediately before conditioning learned faster a…
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 s…
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 us…
A microcomputer system for controlling classical conditioning experiments
A microcomputer-based laboratory system for controlling stimulus presentations and data acquisition in classical conditioning experiments is described. The system comprises an Intel 386/486-based microcomputer and a commercially obtained low-cost counter/timer board with input/output lines for stimulus timing and external device control. A simple, yet versatile custom-designed structured programming language is provided for performing an unlimited number of stimulus configurations and their sequences. In electrophysiological studies, the system can be flexibly connected to computer-controlled signal conditioning systems for the amplification and filtering of multiunit and evoked field poten…
Alliance Formations in Couple Therapy: A Multimodal and Multimethod Study
AbstractThe authors sought to study underlying processes of alliance formation, a multimethod and multimodal research procedure was developed and applied to a 6-minute episode from one couple thera...
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…
How are learning experiences and task properties associated with adolescents’ emotions and psychophysiological states?
We examined whether learning experiences (value of success, mastery experience) and task properties (challenge) are related to early adolescents’ (n = 190, median age = 12) emotional responses and psychophysiological states (autonomic nervous system, ANS) in achievement situations in an ambulatory laboratory. They completed four achievement tasks (two math and two reading) at different challenge levels in randomized order, and reported their learning and task perceptions for each task. The proportion of errors indicated the objective demandingness of each task. As indices of sympathetic nervous system activity, we recorded skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR), and, as parasym…
Conditioned orienting (alpha) and delayed behavioral and evoked neural responses during classical conditioning
A differentiation of short-latency (alpha) and long-latency (delayed) classically conditioned behavioral and evoked neural (hippocampal) responses was attempted. Further, facilitation and retardation of these responses were studied in an experimental design in which 10 paired conditioning sessions either preceded (CC-CO group) or followed (CO-CC group) 10 randomly unpaired presentations of conditioned stimuli (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (UCS). A 2024-ms tone (1000 Hz) was delivered directly through a miniature earphone to the left ear, eliciting an orienting head movement ('alpha' response) to the left. The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) was a direct 1024-ms stimulation of the lateral hypo…
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 classic…
Optogenetically blocking sharp wave ripple events in sleep does not interfere with the formation of stable spatial representation in the CA1 area of the hippocampus
During hippocampal sharp wave/ripple (SWR) events, previously occurring, sensory inputdriven neuronal firing patterns are replayed. Such replay is thought to be important for plasticity-related processes and consolidation of memory traces. It has previously been shown that the electrical stimulation-induced disruption of SWR events interferes with learning in rodents in different experimental paradigms. On the other hand, the cognitive map theory posits that the plastic changes of the firing of hippocampal place cells constitute the electrophysiological counterpart of the spatial learning, observable at the behavioral level. Therefore, we tested whether intact SWR events occurring during th…
Behavioral and hippocampal evoked responses in an auditory oddball situation when an unconditioned stimulus is paired with deviant tones in the cat: Experiment II
Event-related potentials (ERP) in the areas CA1, CA3 and dentate fascia (Df) of the hippocampal formation were recorded during an oddball situation in the cat. A rewarding electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus (US) was paired with deviant tones (2500 Hz) that occurred randomly in a series of the standard tones (2000 Hz) given to the left ear. In addition to developing orienting head movements to the side of the deviant tones, an increase in the amplitude of parallel hippocampal ERPs was observed. Both the behavioral and neural responses appeared not until a 50 ms latency range. Furthermore, time-amplitude characteristics of the ERPs corresponded to time-acceleration characteris…
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 rhythms of the brain. Our recent studies suggest that presenting the conditioned stimulus during expiration or during the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle facilitates neural processing of that stimulus and improves learning an eyeblink classical conditioning task. To date, it has not been examined whether utilizing 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 trace eyeblink conditioning in healthy you…
Disrupting neural activity related to awake-state sharp wave-ripple complexes prevents hippocampal learning
Oscillations in hippocampal local-field potentials (LFPs) reflect the crucial involvement of the hippocampus in memory trace formation: theta (4–8 Hz) oscillations and ripples (~200 Hz) occurring during sharp waves are thought to mediate encoding and consolidation, respectively. During sharp wave-ripple complexes (SPW-Rs), hippocampal cell firing closely follows the pattern that took place during the initial experience, most likely reflecting replay of that event. Disrupting hippocampal ripples using electrical stimulation either during training in awake animals or during sleep after training retards spatial learning. Here, adult rabbits were trained in trace eyeblink conditioning, a hippoc…
Auditory cortical and hippocampal local-field potentials to frequency deviant tones in urethane-anesthetized rats: An unexpected role of the sound frequencies themselves
The human brain can automatically detect auditory changes, as indexed by the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials. The mechanisms that underlie this response are poorly understood. We recorded primary auditory cortical and hippocampal (dentate gyrus, CA1) local-field potentials to serial tones in urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, a rare (deviant) tone (p = 0.11) randomly replaced a repeated (standard) tone. The deviant tone was either lower (2200, 2700, 3200, 3700 Hz) or higher (4300, 4800, 5300, 5800 Hz) in frequency than the standard tone (4000 Hz). In an equiprobability control condition, all nine tones were presented at random (p = 0.11). Differential respo…
Memory-Based Mismatch Response to Frequency Changes in Rats
Any occasional changes in the acoustic environment are of potential importance for survival. In humans, the preattentive detection of such changes generates the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related brain potentials. MMN is elicited to rare changes (‘deviants’) in a series of otherwise regularly repeating stimuli (‘standards’). Deviant stimuli are detected on the basis of a neural comparison process between the input from the current stimulus and the sensory memory trace of the standard stimuli. It is, however, unclear to what extent animals show a similar comparison process in response to auditory changes. To resolve this issue, epidural potentials were recorded above the pr…
A multi-componential methodology for exploring emotions in learning
Studies on emotions in learning are often based on interviews conducted after the learning. Therefore, these do not capture the multi-componential nature of emotions and how emotions are related to the process of learning. We see emotions as dimensional and multi-componential responses to a personally meaningful events and situation. In this methodologically frontline study we developed a multi-componential methodology, which provides complementary information about emotions during learning. In this study, by using a within subject design of one person, we focused on emotions during the professional identity learning. In a laboratory setting, the subject was shown personally meaningful vide…
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 ta…
Auditory cortical and hippocampal-system mismatch responses to duration deviants in urethane-anesthetized rats.
Any change in the invariant aspects of the auditory environment is of potential importance. The human brain preattentively or automatically detects such changes. The mismatch negativity (MMN) of event-related potentials (ERPs) reflects this initial stage of auditory change detection. The origin of MMN is held to be cortical. The hippocampus is associated with a later generated P3a of ERPs reflecting involuntarily attention switches towards auditory changes that are high in magnitude. The evidence for this cortico-hippocampal dichotomy is scarce, however. To shed further light on this issue, auditory cortical and hippocampal-system (CA1, dentate gyrus, subiculum) local-field potentials were …
Auditory cortical and hippocampal local-field potentials to frequency deviant tones in urethane-anesthetized rats: An unexpected role of the sound frequencies themselves
Abstract The human brain can automatically detect auditory changes, as indexed by the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials. The mechanisms that underlie this response are poorly understood. We recorded primary auditory cortical and hippocampal (dentate gyrus, CA1) local-field potentials to serial tones in urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, a rare (deviant) tone ( p = 0.11) randomly replaced a repeated (standard) tone. The deviant tone was either lower (2200, 2700, 3200, 3700 Hz) or higher (4300, 4800, 5300, 5800 Hz) in frequency than the standard tone (4000 Hz). In an equiprobability control condition, all nine tones were presented at random ( p = 0.11). Diffe…
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 dias…
A multi-componential methodology for exploring emotions in learning : using self-reports, behaviour registration, and physiological indicators as complementary data
Studies on emotions in learning are often based on interviews conducted after the learning. These do not capture the multi-componential nature of emotions, nor how emotions are related to the processes of learning. We see emotions as dimensional, multi-componential responses to personally meaningful events and situations. In this methodologically advanced pilot study we developed a multi-componential methodology, capable of providing complementary information on emotions in professional learning. For this purpose, we used a within-subject design applied to a single individual, with a focus on emotions during professional learning. Within a laboratory setting, the subject was shown personall…
Hippocampo-cerebellar theta band phase synchrony in rabbits.
Hippocampal functioning, in the form of theta band oscillation, has been shown to modulate and predict cerebellar learning of which rabbit eyeblink conditioning is perhaps the most well-known example. The contribution of hippocampal neural activity to cerebellar learning is only possible if there is a functional connection between the two structures. Here, in the context of trace eyeblink conditioning, we show (1) that, in addition to the hippocampus, prominent theta oscillation also occurs in the cerebellum, and (2) that cerebellar theta oscillation is synchronized with that in the hippocampus. Further, the degree of phase synchrony (PS) increased both as a response to the conditioning sti…
Sympathetic Nervous System Synchrony in Couple Therapy
The aim of this study was to test whether there is statistically significant sympathetic nervous system (SNS) synchrony between participants in couple therapy. To our knowledge, this is the first study to measure psychophysiological synchrony during therapy in a multiactor setting. The study focuses on electrodermal activity (EDA) in the second couple therapy session from 10 different cases (20 clients, 10 therapists working in pairs). The EDA concordance index was used as a measure of SNS synchrony between dyads, and synchrony was found in 85% of all the dyads. Surprisingly, co-therapists exhibited the highest levels of synchrony, whereas couples exhibited the lowest synchrony. The client-…
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 (…
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 vie…
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 …
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 del…
The Embodied Attunement of Therapists and a Couple within Dialogical Psychotherapy: An Introduction to the Relational Mind Research Project
In dialogical practice, therapists seek to respond to the utterances of clients by including in their own response what the client said. No research so far exists on how, in dialogs, therapists and clients attune themselves to each other with their entire bodies. The research program The Relational Mind is the first to look at dialog in terms of both the outer and the inner dialogs of participants (clients and therapists), observed in parallel with autonomic nervous system (ANS) measurements. In the ANS, the response occurs immediately, even before conscious thought, making it possible to follow how participants in a multiactor dialog synchronize their reactions and attune themselves to eac…
Hippocampal evoked potentials to pitch deviances in an auditory oddball situation in the rabbit: no human mismatch-like dependence on standard stimuli.
Hippocampal auditory evoked potentials (AEP) were recorded in 10 rabbits when pitch deviant tones occurred in a series of standard tones (oddball situation). In control recordings, deviant tones were presented without intervening standard tones (deviant-alone situation). All AEP deflections observed in the oddball situation were found also in the deviant-alone situation. Thus, it appeared that none of the AEP deflections to deviant tones in the oddball situation was specific to a memory trace of preceding standard tones. This observation was in contradiction to such a specificity of the mismatch negativity (MMN) found in humans. Instead, a connection to a neuronal orienting reaction interpr…
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…
Hippocampal theta phase-contingent memory retrieval in delay and trace eyeblink conditioning
Hippocampal theta oscillations (3-12Hz) play a prominent role in learning. It has been suggested that encoding and retrieval of memories are supported by different phases of the theta cycle. Our previous study on trace eyeblink conditioning in rabbits suggests that the timing of the conditioned stimulus (CS) in relation to theta phase affects encoding but not retrieval of the memory trace. Here, we directly tested the effects of hippocampal theta phase on memory retrieval in two experiments conducted on adult female New Zealand White rabbits. In Experiment 1, animals were trained in trace eyeblink conditioning followed by extinction, and memory retrieval was tested by presenting the CS at t…
Coupling between simultaneously recorded BOLD response and neuronal activity in the rat somatosensory cortex
Abstract Understanding the link between the hemodynamic response and the underlying neuronal activity is important for interpreting functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) signals in human and animal studies. Simultaneous electrophysiological and functional imaging measurements provide a knowledge of information processing and communication in the brain with high spatial and temporal resolution. In this study, a range of neural and blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses were elicited in the rat somatosensory cortex by changing the type of anesthesia (urethane or alpha-chloralose) and the electrical forepaw stimulus frequency (1–15 Hz). Duration of the stimulus was 30 s. Electrical …
The Significance of Silent Moments in Creating Words for the Not-Yet-Spoken Experiences in Threat of Divorce
In the context of couple therapy involving the threat of divorce, the study examined the significance of silent moments for arriving at words for the not-yet-spoken experiences. It also examined whether interactional and embodied synchrony occurred during such silent moments. A mixed method analysis was conducted, focusing on the therapeutic dialogue, psychophysiological data (the Autonomic Nervous System, ANS), and the participants’ thoughts and feelings during individual Stimulated Recall interviews. Two episodes containing several silent moments were analyzed. The analysis indicated that during the silent moments the participants continued the therapeutic conversations through their enti…
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 ob…
Auditory cortical event-related potentials to pitch deviances in rats
Abstract We recorded epidural event-related potentials (ERPs) from the auditory cortex in anesthetized rats when pitch-deviant tones were presented in a homogenous series of standard tones (oddball condition). Additionally, deviant tones were presented without standard tones (deviant-alone condition). ERPs to deviant tones in the oddball condition differed significantly from ERPs to standard tones at the latency range of 63–243 ms. On the other hand, ERPs to deviant tones in the deviant-alone condition did not differ from ERPs to standard tones until 196 ms from stimulus onset. The results suggest that oddball stimuli can be neurophysiologically discriminated in anesthetized rats. Furthermo…
Asymmetries in classically conditioned head movements and cingulate cortex slow potentials in cats.
Presuming that conditioned head movements in the cat indicate a preference for a specific direction, asymmetries were also expected to be found in bilaterally recorded cingulate cortex slow potentials to a symmetrical tone stimulus during discriminative conditioning. Conditioned stimuli (CS, 1000 and 2500 Hz tones) were delivered through two miniature loudspeakers fitted to the head in front of both ears. The unconditioned stimulus (US) was an electrical stimulation of either the left or right lateral hypothalamus yielding, in addition to its rewarding effects, an unconditioned head turning response (UR) either to the left, right, forwards or upwards. Discrimination learning appeared as mor…
Hippocampal event-related potentials to pitch deviances in an auditory oddball situation in the cat: experiment I.
Hippocampal event-related potentials (ERP) in the areas CA1, CA3, and dentate fascia (Df) were recorded in cats during an oddball situation when pitch deviant tones occurred in a series of standard tones. When difference waves were calculated by subtracting ERPs to the standard tones from those to the deviant tones, no clear N40d, corresponding to a cat analogue of the human mismatch negativity (MMN) observed in earlier studies, could be detected. Instead, a prominent later negativity (N130d) was observed. A possible extra-hippocampal source of the process reflected by the MMN-like negativity, and a relation between an orienting response (OR) and the N130d are discussed.
Entrevistas de Recuerdo Estimulado: ¿Cómo la entrevista de investigación puede contribuir a nuevas prácticas terapéuticas? [Stimulated Recall Interviews: How can the research interview contribute to new therapeutic practices?]
The subjective experiences of participants in couple therapy have been explored through Stimulated Recall Interviews (SRIs), in which both clients and therapists come individually to watch video clips of their therapy sessions. We believe SRIs offer a good resource for Practice Oriented Research (POR) by promoting meaningful, flexible interplay between scientific research and clinical practice. Team members have different roles, either as “insiders” or “outsiders” of the therapeutic setting. The potential benefits of these interviews are illustrated by a case study conducted within the Relational Mind research project, in which SRIs helped to promote the emergence of reflections. SRIs, hith…
Affective Arousal During Blaming in Couple Therapy: Combining Analyses of Verbal Discourse and Physiological Responses in Two Case Studies
Blaming one’s partner is common in couple therapy and such moral comment often evokes affective arousal. How people attune to each other as whole embodied beings is a current focus of interest in psychotherapy research. This study contributes to the literature by looking at attunement during critical moments in therapy interaction. Responses to blaming in verbal dialogue and at the level of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) were investigated in two couple therapy cases with a client couple and two therapists. Video-recorded couple therapy sessions were analyzed using discursive psychology and a narrative approach. The use of positioning, a discourse analytic tool, was also studied. ANS res…
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…
The role of adolescents' temperament in their positive and negative emotions as well as in psychophysiological reactions during achievement situations
Abstract This study examined the role of adolescents' (n = 190) temperament in their emotional reactions in achievement situations. Adolescents rated their temperament (i.e., surgency/extraversion, negative affectivity, effortful control) and completed achievement tasks in Grade 6. They also reported their emotions before and during challenging and non-challenging tasks. In addition, adolescents' autonomic nervous system reactions (i.e., skin conductance levels) were recorded. The results showed that high effortful control was related to higher levels of positive emotions independent of the degree of task difficulty. Low negative affectivity and high effortful control were related to lower …
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 im…
Electrodermal activity in couple therapy for intimate partner violence
The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which intimate partner violence (IPV) is discussed in couple therapy, what the participants say about it and how, and how the participants’ electrodermal activity (EDA) is activated during these discussions. We studied four couples for whom IPV was an issue in dialog with their therapists. We used thematic analysis and examined the differences in EDA (measured as skin conductance responses, SCRs) between the participants. We found that although IPV was discussed relatively little in therapy, when the topic arose the victims took an active part in the discussion. We also found that the main themes were descriptions of IPV, explanations for I…
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 betw…
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 small and 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…
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, …
Associations Between Adolescents' Subjectively Experienced Emotions and Psychophysiological Reactions in Achievement Situations
This study investigated associations of early adolescents' (N=190, median age = 12) subjectively experienced emotions and psychophysiological reactions in achievement situations. Self-reported questions assessed adolescents' experienced emotions. Additionally, adolescents' autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactions were recorded; skin-conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR) were used to measure sympathetic nervous system activity, and heart rate variability (HRV) was used to measure parasympathetic nervous system activity. The between-person-level results of multilevel modeling showed that increased HR was associated with higher levels of hope and fear and that decreased SCR was associ…
Hippocampal theta phase-contingent memory retrieval in delay and trace eyeblink conditioning
Hippocampal theta oscillations (3–12 Hz) play a prominent role in learning. It has been suggested that encoding and retrieval of memories are supported by different phases of the theta cycle. Our previous study on trace eyeblink conditioning in rabbits suggests that the timing of the conditioned stimulus (CS) in relation to theta phase affects encoding but not retrieval of the memory trace. Here, we directly tested the effects of hippocampal theta phase on memory retrieval in two experiments conducted on adult female New Zealand White rabbits. In Experiment 1, animals were trained in trace eyeblink conditioning followed by extinction, and memory retrieval was tested by presenting the CS at …
Effects of rewarding electrical stimulation of lateral hypothalamus on classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane response.
1. Adult New Zealand albino rabbits were prepared with chronic hypothalamic stimulating electrodes and hippocampal recording electrodes. 2. Rabbits were restrained and classically conditioned by a tone CS and an airpuff US either followed or preceded by a hypothalamic stimulation (HS). Control rabbits were conditioned without the HS. 3. It was found that HS following the CS facilitated both behavioral and hippocampal responses, while HS preceding the CS inhibited them. 4. Enhanced hippocampal learning-related unit firing to the CS may represent an early indication of conditioning before the behavioral activity produces any observable change.
Integrating Self-Reports and Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Measurement in Studying Emotions in Professional Learning
Studies on emotions in learning have been mostly conducted through self-reporting questionnaires and interviews conducted after the learning situation, which seldom focus on professional workplace learning. Meanwhile, workplace and professional learning research has been introduced with emerging methods to capture the learning processes at multiple levels. Previous research on emotions has suggested that self-reports should be supplemented with psychophysiological data. Challenged by this, this chapter aims to present and discuss the integration of self-reported and psychophysiological data in studying emotions and professional learning. The empirical research data are obtained from five Fi…
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, …
Hippocampal electrical stimulation disrupts associative learning when targeted at dentate spikes
Hippocampal electrophysiological oscillations, namely theta and ripples, have been implicated in encoding and consolidation of new memories, respectively. According to existing literature, hippocampal dentate spikes are prominent, short‐duration (<30 ms), large‐amplitude (∼2–4 mV) fluctuations in hilar local‐field potentials that take place during awake immobility and sleep. Interestingly, previous studies indicate that during dentate spikes dentate gyrus granule cells increase their firing while firing of CA1 pyramidal cells are suppressed, thus resulting in momentary uncoupling of the two hippocampal subregions. To date, the behavioural significance of dentate spikes is unknown. Here, to …
Studying Nonverbal Synchrony in Couple Therapy : Observing Implicit Posture and Movement Synchrony
AbstractResearch on nonverbal synchrony (movement coordination) in psychotherapy has recently attracted increased attention. Nonverbal synchrony has been shown to relate to the therapeutic alliance and outcome. However, research on nonverbal synchrony in couple therapy remains scarce. In this study, we examined the therapy process of one couple in detail and created a coding scheme to depict posture and movement synchrony. In this case study, we found that the relationship between nonverbal synchrony and the therapeutic alliance was complex. During the therapy process, the amount of nonverbal synchrony varied, as did the participants’ evaluations of the alliance. In couple therapy nonverbal…
Hippocampal ripple-contingent training accelerates trace eyeblink conditioning and retards extinction in rabbits.
There are at least two distinct oscillatory states of the hippocampus that are related to distinct behavioral patterns. Theta (4–12 Hz) oscillation has been suggested to indicate selective attention during which the animal concentrates on some features of the environment while suppressing reactivity to others. In contrast, sharp-wave ripples (∼200 Hz) can be seen in a state in which the hippocampus is at its most responsive to any kind of afferent stimulation. In addition, external stimulation tends to evoke and reset theta oscillation, the phase of which has been shown to modulate synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. Theoretically, training on a hippocampus-dependent learning task conti…
Unilateral medial forebrain bundle activation selectively enhances conditioned orienting head turns and ipsilateral cingulate cortex evoked field responses in cats
Effects of a unilateral medial forebrain bundle (MFB) stimulation unconditioned stimulus (US) on conditioned head turn and bilateral cingulate cortex field potentials were studied in cats. Conditioned stimuli (CSs) of different frequences were given randomly to either ear. The CS+ was followed by the US, and the CS— was presented alone. Before conditioning most cats predominantly turned toward the ear to which the CSs were presented, whereas after conditioning the head turns were in one direction, most prominently contralateral to the US. Negative field potentials were greater in the cingulate cortex ipsilateral to the US than in the cingulate cortex contralateral to the US. Cross correlati…
Phase matters: responding to and learning about peripheral stimuli depends on hippocampal θ phase at stimulus onset.
Hippocampal θ (3–12 Hz) oscillations are implicated in learning and memory, but their functional role remains unclear. We studied the effect of the phase of local θ oscillation on hippocampal responses to a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) and subsequent learning of classical trace eyeblink conditioning in adult rabbits. High-amplitude, regular hippocampal θ-band responses (that predict good learning) were elicited by the CS when it was timed to commence at the fissure θ trough (Trough group). Regardless, learning in this group was not enhanced compared with a yoked control group, possibly due to a ceiling effect. However, when the CS was consistently presented to the peak of θ (Peak group…
Evoked local field potentials can explain temporal variation in blood oxygenation level-dependent responses in rat somatosensory cortex
The aim of this study was to explain the temporal variations between subjects in the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response. Somatosensory responses were elicited with the electrical forepaw stimulus at a frequency of 10 Hz in urethane-anesthetized rats, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with BOLD contrast and local field potential (LFP) measurements were performed simultaneously. BOLD fMRI activation was evaluated by two different models, one based on the stimulus paradigm (the block model) and the other on the simultaneously measured evoked LFP responses. In the initial analysis, the LFP model captured the BOLD activation in the primary somatosensory cortex in al…
Hippocampal electrical stimulation disrupts associative learning when targeted at dentate spikes
KEY POINTS Dentate spikes are fast fluctuations of hilar local-field potentials that take place during rest and are thought to reflect input arriving from the entorhinal cortex to the hippocampus. During dentate spikes, neuronal firing in hippocampal input (dentate gyrus) and output (CA1/CA3) regions is uncoupled. To date, the behavioural significance of dentate spikes is unknown. Here, we provide evidence that disrupting the dentate spike-related uncoupling of the dentate gyrus and the CA1/CA3 subregions for 1 h after training retards associative learning. We suggest dentate spikes play a significant role in memory consolidation. ABSTRACT Hippocampal electrophysiological oscillations, name…
Auditory cortical and hippocampal-system mismatch responses to duration deviants in urethane-anesthetized rats
Any change in the invariant aspects of the auditory environment is of potential importance. The human brain preattentively or automatically detects such changes. The mismatch negativity (MMN) of event-related potentials (ERPs) reflects this initial stage of auditory change detection. The origin of MMN is held to be cortical. The hippocampus is associated with a later generated P3a of ERPs reflecting involuntarily attention switches towards auditory changes that are high in magnitude. The evidence for this cortico-hippocampal dichotomy is scarce, however. To shed further light on this issue, auditory cortical and hippocampal-system (CA1, dentate gyrus, subiculum) local-field potentials were …