assessment-age-related-changes-cognitive-functions-using-emocogmeter

Assessment of Age-related Changes in Cognitive Functions Using EmoCogMeter, a Novel Tablet-computer Based Approach

The main goal of this study was to assess the usability of a tablet-computer-based application (EmoCogMeter) in investigating the effects of age on ...

Freie Universität Berlin

Charité Berlin

The present study aimed at investigating the behavioral effects and neuronal correlates of emotional content and emotional components, i.e. valence and arousal, in the context of a verbal working memory task. Our findings in twenty healthy male subjects demonstrate that (1) word valence has no impact on performance in the verbal working memory task, and (2) that emotion leads to an increase of activation in cognition-related lateral prefrontal regions, whereas cognitive effort yields enhanced deactivation in emotion-related cortical midline regions. The stronger dorsolateral prefrontal recruitment during emotional stimuli may reflect an arousal effect or higher cognitive effort due to interference with emotion.

Neural mechanisms underlying the integration of emotion and working memory.

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) has been shown to modulate a variety of human social behaviors. However, little is known about its impact on emotional memory processing. Previous research demonstrated both memory-enhancing and memory-impairing oxytocinergic effects.

Effects of intranasal oxytocin prior to encoding and retrieval on recognition memory.

Little is known about the neural correlates underlying the integration of working memory and emotion processing. We investigated the effects of low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) applied over the left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on emotional working memory. In a sham-controlled crossover design, participants performed an emotional 3-back task (EMOBACK) at baseline and after stimulation (1 Hz, 15 min, 110 % of the resting motor threshold) in two subsequent sessions. Stimuli were words assigned to the distinct emotion categories fear and anger as well as neutral words. We found lateralized rTMS effects in the EMOBACK task accuracy for fear-related words, with enhanced performance after rTMS applied over the right DLPFC and impaired performance after rTMS applied over the left DLPFC. No significant stimulation effect could be found for anger-related and neutral words. Our findings are the first to demonstrate a causal role of the right DLPFC in working memory for negative, withdrawal-related words and provide further support for a hemispheric lateralization of emotion processing.

Lateralized effects of prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on emotional working memory.

Previous studies suggest that there may be a distinct relationship between spontaneous neural activity and subsequent or concurrent self-specific stimulus-induced activity. This study aims to test the impact of spontaneous activity as recorded in an eyes-open (EO) resting state as opposed to eyes-closed (EC) on self-specific versus non-self-specific auditory stimulus-induced activity in fMRI. In our first experiment we used self-specific stimuli comprised of the subject's own name and non-self-specific stimuli comprised of a friend's name and an unknown name, presented during EO versus EC baselines in a 3 name condition × 2 baseline design. In Experiment 2 we directly measured spontaneous activity in the absence of stimuli during EO versus EC to confirm a modulatory effect of the two baseline conditions in the regions found to show an interaction effect in Experiment 1. Spontaneous activity during EO was significantly higher than during EC in bilateral auditory cortex and non-self-specific names yielded stronger signal changes relative to EO baseline than to EC. In contrast, there was no difference in response to self-specific names relative to EO baseline than to EC despite the difference between spontaneous activity levels. These results support an impact of spontaneous activity on stimulus-induced activity, moreover an impact that depends on the high-level stimulus characteristic of self-specificity.

Self-specific stimuli interact differently than non-self-specific stimuli with eyes-open versus eyes-closed spontaneous activity in auditory cortex.

A growing body of findings illustrates the importance of state-dependency in studies using brain stimulation.

State-dependent effects of prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on emotional working memory.

Early life stress (ELS) is associated with altered stress responsivity, structural and functional brain changes and an increased risk for the development of psychopathological conditions in later life. Due to its behavioral and physiological effects, the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is a useful tool to investigate stress responsivity, even though the neurobiological underpinnings of its effects are still unknown. Here we investigate the effects of OXT on cortisol stress response and neural activity during psychosocial stress. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy subjects with and without a history of ELS, we found attenuated hormonal reactivity and significantly reduced limbic deactivation after OXT administration in subjects without a history of ELS. Subjects who experienced ELS showed both blunted stress reactivity and limbic deactivation during stress. Furthermore, in these subjects OXT had opposite effects with increased hormonal reactivity and increased limbic deactivation. Our results might implicate that reduced limbic deactivation and HPA-axis responsivity during psychosocial stress are markers for biological resilience after ELS. Effects of OXT in subjects with a history of maltreatment could therefore be considered detrimental and suggest careful consideration of OXT administration in such individuals.

Anne Weigand

Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion",
Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion

Freie Universität Berlin

Assessment of Age-related Changes in Cognitive Functions Using EmoCogMeter, a Novel Tablet-computer Based Approach

Anne Weigand

Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion",Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion

Freie Universität Berlin

Assessment of Age-related Changes in Cognitive Functions Using EmoCogMeter, a Novel Tablet-computer Based Approach

Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion",
Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion