Search results for "Physiological psychology"
showing 10 items of 760 documents
An empirical test of Sokolov's entropy model of the orienting response.
1974
Several hypotheses, most of them deduced from Sokolov's entropy model of the Orienting Response (OR), were tested. The Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) served as the indicator of the OR. Printed language, analyzed with regard to the information content in bits, was used as stimulus material. Forty-eight female students served as subjects. The results indicate: (1) that the uncertainty of a situation does not determine the strength of the OR, (2) that the strength of the OR depends on the information carried by an event, and (3) that the processing of this information, as indicated by the OR, may be delayed by one or more events in a serial application. For tonic level over a series of events no…
Enhanced Spatial Navigation Skills in Sequence-Space Synesthetes
2018
Contains fulltext : 219554.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Individuals with sequence-space synesthesia (SSS) perceive sequences like months, days and numbers in certain spatial arrangements. Several cognitive benefits have been associated with SSS, such as enhanced mental rotation, more vivid visual imagery and an advantage in spatial processing. The current study aimed to further investigate these cognitive benefits, focusing on spatial navigation skills, to explore if their enhanced sensitivity to spatial relations is reflected in enhanced navigational performance. Synesthetes were distinguished from controls by means of a questionnaire, a consistency test and drawings. A virtu…
2021
In humans and mammals, effort-based decision-making for monetary or food rewards paradigms contributes to the study of adaptive goal-directed behaviours acquired through reinforcement learning. Chronic distress modelled by repeated exposure to glucocorticoids in rodents induces suboptimal decision-making under uncertainty by impinging on instrumental acquisition and prompting negative valence behaviours. In order to further disentangle the motivational tenets of adaptive decision-making, this study addressed the consequences of enduring distress on relevant effort and reward-processing dimensions. Experimentally, appetitive and consummatory components of motivation were evaluated in adult C…
The Interaction Between Physical and Psychosocial Stressors
2020
Do physical and psychosocial stressors interact to increase stress in ways not explainable by the stressors alone? A preliminary study compared participants’ stress response while subjected to a physical stressor (reduced or full physical load) and a predetermined social stressor (confronted by calm or aggressive behavior). Salivary cortisol samples measured endocrine stress. Heart rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA) measured autonomic stress. Perceived stress was measured via discomfort and stress state surveys. Participants with a heavier load reported increased distress and discomfort. Encountering an aggressive individual increased endocrine stress, distress levels, …
ELSA 2014 Cohort: Risk Factors Associated With Heavy Episodic Drinking Trajectories in Argentinean College Students
2020
Heavy episodic drinking (HED) is highly prevalent in college students. In Argentina, there is a notable lack of longitudinal studies examining drinking trajectories. The present study identified HED trajectories in Argentinean college students during the first 3 years of college (seven waves) and examined the association between risk factors for alcohol use and HED trajectories. The sample was composed of 1,240 college students [63.1% women, aged 18–25 years (M = 19.1 ± 1.7)] who completed at least three waves (the first data collection and ≥2 follow-ups). For 3 years, participants completed seven surveys that measured HED frequency, age of drinking onset, drunkenness occurrence, trait impu…
Serotoninergic Modulation of Phototactic Variability Underpins a Bet-Hedging Strategy in Drosophila melanogaster
2021
When organisms’ environmental conditions vary unpredictably in time, it can be advantageous for individuals to hedge their phenotypic bets. It has been shown that a bet-hedging strategy possibly underlies the high inter-individual diversity of phototactic choice in Drosophila melanogaster. This study shows that fruit flies from a population living in a boreal and relatively unpredictable climate have more variable variable phototactic biases than fruit flies from a more stable tropical climate, consistent with bet-hedging theory. We experimentally show that phototactic variability of D. melanogaster is regulated by the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-HT), which acts as a suppressor of the var…
Brain Oscillatory and Hemodynamic Activity in a Bimanual Coordination Task Following Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS): A Combined …
2018
Motor control is associated with synchronized oscillatory activity at alpha (8–12 Hz) and beta (12–30 Hz) frequencies in a cerebello-thalamo-cortical network. Previous studies demonstrated that transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is capable of entraining ongoing oscillatory activity while also modulating motor control. However, the modulatory effects of tACS on both motor control and its underlying electro- and neurophysiological mechanisms remain ambiguous. Thus, the purpose of this study was to contribute to gathering neurophysiological knowledge regarding tACS effects by investigating the after-effects of 10 Hz tACS and 20 Hz tACS at parietal brain areas on bimanual coord…
Trait impulsivity associated with altered resting-state functional connectivity within the somatomotor network
2020
Knowledge of brain mechanisms underlying self-regulation can provide valuable insights into how people regulate their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional states, and what happens when such regulation fails. Self-regulation is supported by coordinated interactions of brain systems. Hence, behavioral dysregulation, and its expression as impulsivity, can be usefully characterized using functional connectivity methodologies applied to resting brain networks. The current study tested whether individual differences in trait impulsivity are reflected in the functional architecture within and between resting-state brain networks. Thirty healthy individuals completed a self-report measure of trait im…
Beyond decomposition: Processing zero-derivations in English visual word recognition
2019
Four experiments investigate the effects of covert morphological complexity during visual word recognition. Zero-derivations occur in English in which a change of word class occurs without any change in surface form (e.g., a boat-to boat; to soak-a soak). Boat is object-derived and is a basic noun (N), whereas soak is action-derived and is a basic verb (V). As the suffix {-ing} is only attached to verbs, deriving boating from its base, requires two steps, boat(N) > boat(V) > boating(V), while soaking can be derived in one step from soak(V). Experiments 1 to 3 used masked priming at different prime durations to test matched sets of one- and two-step verbs for morphological (soaking-SOA…
Rapid categorization of sound objects in anesthetized rats as indexed by the electrophysiological mismatch response
2014
It is not known whether animals can, similarly to humans, categorize auditory objects based on an abstract rule in combining their physical features. We recorded local-field potentials from the dura above the primary auditory cortex in urethane-anesthetized rats presented with sound series occasionally violating a rule (e.g., "the higher the frequency, the weaker the intensity"). In a separate control condition, the same frequency and intensity levels were applied in the sound objects, but they obeyed no rule. Responses found selectively to the violations of the rule suggest that an abstract rule was represented in the rat brain, enabling auditory categorization.