This work was supported by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada and by the Cannon Research Center at Carolinas Rehabilitation in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

This protocol was approved by the institutional review boards at Brock University and at Carolinas Rehabilitation.
1. Prior to Testing
<ol>
	<li>Create 3 separate lists for the 15 film clips, each listing the clips in a different restricted order.</li>
	<li>Ensure that each list begins and ends with a neutral stimulus and that no two clips that target the same emotion occur consecutively.</li>
	<li>Create a separate folder on the desktop for each list of film order presentation and label the folder with the Order name (e.g., Order 1).</li>
	<li>Save the 15 clips into each of the three folders.</li>
	<li>Re-label each film clip so it reflects the presentation number and gives no clues regarding the target emotion (i.e., 01; 02; 03; etc.).</li>
	<li>Create six randomized orders of task (DANVA-Faces, DANVA-Voices, Film Clips) presentation (see Figure 1).</li>
	<li>Assign the incoming participant to one of the three restricted orders of film clips presentation.</li>
	<li>Assign the incoming participant to one of the six randomized orders of task presentation.</li>
</ol>
2. Day of Testing
<ol>
	<li>Bring participant(s) into the lab and seat them comfortably at the table.</li>
	<li>Review the consent form with the participant by reading each section with him/her.</li>
	<li>Answer any questions the participant may have about the consent form and have him/her sign it.</li>
	<li>Have participants complete the brief demographic questionnaire (Date of birth; gender). Have participants with TBI additionally complete the section of the questionnaire on relevant medical history questionnaire (date of injury, cause of injury, injury severity). 
	NOTE: When participants are completing the questionnaire, inquire about any known visual processing difficulties so you may seat participants with TBI accordingly</li>
	<li>Position the participant in front of the computer in a chair. Ensure that all participants (if more than one) have a clear view of the screen.</li>
</ol>
3. DANVA-Faces Task
<ol>
	<li>Give each participant a clip board with the DANVA-Faces response sheet attached and a pen to circle responses.</li>
	<li>Provide the participant the following instructions: &#34;After you see each item, circle your response (happy, sad, angry, fearful, or neutral) on the line that corresponds to the item number shown on each slide.&#34; 
	NOTE: If participants with TBI have indicated visual processing difficulties or fine motor difficulties are evident, provide the participant with the alternate response page. This page lists the five responses in larger text in landscape format.</li>
	<li>Open the DANVA-Faces task in a presentation and play it using the Slide Show View.</li>
	<li>Give participants the following instructions: &#34;For this activity, I am going to show you some peoples&#39; faces and I want you to tell me how they feel. I want you to tell me if they are happy, sad, angry or fearful. Fearful is the same thing as afraid or scared. If you are unsure of the emotion, choose the &#39;I don&#39;t know&#39; response. There are 24 faces altogether. Each face will be on the screen for five seconds. You must answer before the face disappears for your answer to count. Indicate your answer by circling it on the sheet in front of you&#34;. 
	NOTE: If the participant is unable to circle his/her own responses and is participating in in the study as part of a small group, provide the following instruction: &#34;Indicate your answer by pointing to it on the sheet in front of you&#34;. The examiner will then record the participant&#39;s response on the DANVA-Faces response sheet.</li>
	<li>Ensure the participants do not have any questions before starting.</li>
	<li>Start the task with the two practice trials. Give participants the following instructions: &#34;We are going to complete two practice trials so that you get a sense of how long each face will appear on the screen, and how long you have to provide your answer&#34;.</li>
	<li>Hit enter on the keyboard when the face disappears to move to the next stimulus. Ensure all participants are looking up at the screen before doing so.</li>
	<li>Ensure that the participants do not have questions. If none, begin the test trials. Ensure all participants are looking at the screen. Hit enter to start the test stimuli.</li>
	<li>Continue the procedure outlined for the practice tasks until the 24 stimuli are complete.</li>
	<li>Collect the participant response sheets.</li>
</ol>
4. DANVA-Voices Task
<ol>
	<li>Give each participant a clip board with the DANVA-Voices response sheet attached and a pen to circle responses. 
	NOTE: If participants with TBI have indicated visual processing difficulties or fine motor difficulties are evident, provide the participant with the alternate response page. This page lists the five responses in larger text in landscape format.</li>
	<li>Open the DANVA-Voices task by going to the following website: 
	http://www.psychology.emory.edu/clinical/interpersonal/danva.htm</li>
	<li>Click on the link for Adult faces, voices, and postures.</li>
	<li>Fill in the login and password by entering any letter for the login and typing EMORYDANVA2 for the password.</li>
	<li>Click Continue.</li>
	<li>Click on Voices (green circle in the center of the screen).</li>
	<li>Test the volume level. Provide the following instructions: &#34;I want to be sure that you can hear the sound on the computer and that it is at a comfortable volume for you. I am going to click test sound. Please tell me if you can hear the sound, and also if you need the sound to be louder or more quiet to be comfortable for you.&#34;</li>
	<li>Click test sound.</li>
	<li>Adjust the volume according to the participant&#39;s request (increase/decrease).</li>
	<li>Click &#39;test sound&#39; again. Adjust the volume according to the participant&#39;s request. Do this until the participant reports it is at a comfortable volume.</li>
	<li>Review the task instructions with the participant. Give participants the following instructions: For this activity, you are going to hear someone say the sentence &#39;I&#39;m going out of the room now, but I&#39;ll be back later.&#39; I want you to tell me if they are happy, sad, angry or fearful. Fearful is the same thing as afraid or scared. If you are unsure of the emotion, choose the &#39;I don&#39;t know&#39; response. There are 24 sentences. Before each sentence is spoken, a number will be announced. You need to listen to the sentence that follows. The sentences will not be repeated so you need to listen carefully. Tell me how the person is feeling by circling your answer on the sheet in front of you&#34;. Once you have made your selection, I need to select a response on the computer screen to move to the next item. I will always select the same emotion (fearful). My selection does not indicate the correct answer in anyway.&#34; 
	NOTE: If the participant is unable to circle his/her own responses and is participating in in the study as part of a small group, provide the following instruction: &#34;Indicate your answer by pointing to it on the sheet in front of you&#34;. The examiner will then record the participant&#39;s response on the DANVA-Voices response sheet.</li>
	<li>Click &#39;continue&#39;.</li>
	<li>Direct participants to circle (or point to) their answer on their response sheet when the sentence has played.</li>
	<li>Click &#39;fearful&#39;. Click &#39;next&#39;.</li>
	<li>Continue this procedure until the 24 sentences are complete.</li>
	<li>Exit the website when you reach the end of the task.</li>
	<li>Collect the participants&#39; response sheets.</li>
</ol>
5. Film Clip Task
<ol>
	<li>Seat participants comfortably in front of the computer. Ensure that the screen can be fully seen by all.</li>
	<li>Give each person a clipboard with a copy of the Emotional Film Clip Response sheet. 
	NOTE: If participants with TBI have indicated visual processing difficulties or fine motor difficulties are evident, provide the participant with two alternate response pages. The first page lists the five forced-choice responses and the second provides the 0-9 scale. Both response pages are in larger text and in landscape format.</li>
	<li>Open the folder on the computer for the assigned order of film clip presentation.</li>
	<li>Provide participants with the following directions: &#34;You are going to view a total of 15 film clips. In each film clip, you are going to see a character who looks like they are feeling a certain emotion. They might look &#39;happy&#39;, &#39;sad&#39;, &#39;angry&#39;, &#39;fearful&#39;, or &#39;neutral&#39;. First, I want you to tell me what emotion the character is showing. Then tell me what emotion you experienced while watching the film clip. Finally, tell me the number that best describes the intensity of the emotion you felt while watching the clip. For example, if the person&#39;s face made you feel &#39;mildly&#39; happy or sad, circle a number ranging from 1 to 3. If you felt &#39;moderately&#39; happy or sad, circle a number ranging from 4 to 6. If you felt &#39;very&#39; happy or sad, circle a number ranging from 7 to 9. Only circle 0 if you did not feel any emotion at all. Do you have any questions?&#34; 
	NOTE: Only the first question (Tell me what emotion the character is showing) was analyzed for the current study.</li>
	<li>Double click 01 to open the first film clip.</li>
	<li>Tell the participant which character to focus on while viewing the clip.</li>
	<li>Select &#39;View Full Screen&#39; in the options menu to play the clip.</li>
	<li>Direct the participants to respond to line a (What emotion is the main character experiencing?) on their response sheet when the clip has finished playing.</li>
	<li>Direct the participants to respond to line b (Choose one emotion that best describes how you felt while watching the clip) on the response sheet once line a has been answered.</li>
	<li>Direct the participant to respond to line c (How would you rate the intensity of the emotion you experienced while watching the clip?) once line b has been answered.</li>
	<li>Direct the participant to re-direct his/her attention to the computer screen once the responses are complete.</li>
	<li>Return to the folder on the computer that contains the film clips in the assigned order for the participant.</li>
	<li>Double cck on 02 to open the second film clip. Repeat Steps 5.5 to 5.12 until the participant has viewed all 15 film clips.</li>
	<li>Collect the response sheet from the participant(s).</li>
</ol>
6. Moving from One Task to Another (Optional Step)
<ol>
	<li>Provide participants the option to take a break between Tasks 2 and 3.</li>
</ol>
7. Scoring the Tasks
<ol>
	<li>Refer to the answer key on page 25 of the DANVA2 manual32 to score the DANVA-Faces task.</li>
	<li>Score items that match the answer key as 1 and incorrect items as 0. &#39;I don&#39;t know&#39; responses are scored as 0.</li>
	<li>Calculate a raw score by adding the total number of correct responses. Divide the raw score by 24 (total items) to obtain a percentage accuracy score.</li>
	<li>Refer to the answer key on page 27 of the DANVA2 manual32 and repeat steps 7.2 and 7.3 to score the DANVA-Voices task.</li>
	<li>Refer to the answer key for assigned order of film clip presentation for the participant. Score a 1 if the participant identified the target emotion when responding to the question about what emotion the character was showing, and 0 if the participant did not select the target emotion (including if the participant said &#39;I don&#39;t know&#39;).</li>
	<li>Calculate a raw score by adding the number of correct responses. Divide the raw score by 15 (total items) to obtain a percentage accuracy score.</li>
	<li>Create a subset score for the Film Clip task that contains only responses to the happy, sad, angry, and fearful film clips by adding correct responses to only these 12 clips. Divide the number of correct responses by 12 to obtain a percentage accuracy score.</li>
	<li>Create a score for responses to neutral film clips by adding the number of correct responses to the neutral clips. Divide the number of correct responses by 3 to obtain a percentage accuracy score. 
	NOTE: A subset score needs to be created because the DANVA tasks did not include portrayals of Neutral while the Film Clips task did.</li>
	<li>Calculate a score for responses to positively valenced items (i.e., happy) and negatively valenced items (combine responses to angry, fearful and sad stimuli) for all three tasks.</li>
	<li>Divide the score for positively valenced items for each task by 3 to obtain percentage accuracy score.</li>
	<li>Divide the score for negatively valenced items for each task by 9 to obtain percentage accuracy scores.</li>
</ol>
8. Data Analysis
<ol>
	<li>Conduct a mixed model analyses of variance (ANOVA) to examine responses to isolated facial emotion stimuli, isolated vocal emotion stimuli, and multimodal film clip stimuli by participants with TBI and Control participants.</li>
	<li>Explore main effects found in the ANOVA using follow-up univariate comparisons.</li>
</ol>

The author has nothing to disclose.

The manuscript describes three tasks used to assess emotion recognition abilities of people with TBI. The goal of the described method was to compare response accuracy for facial and vocal emotional cues in isolation, to perception of these cues occurring simultaneously within meaningful situational context. Film clips were included in the current study because their approximation of everyday situations made them more ecologically valid than isolated representations of emotion expressions. When carrying out this protocol...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects approximately 10 million people each year across the world 1. Following TBI, the ability to recognize emotion in others using nonverbal cues such as facial and vocal expressions (i.e., tone of voice), and contextual cues, is often significantly compromised 2-7. Since successful interpersonal interactions and quality relationships are at least partially dependent on accurate interpretation of others&#39; emotions7-10, it is not surprising that difficulty with emotion recognition has been reported to contribute to the poor social outcomes commonly reported following TBI3,8,11,12.
Studies investigating emotion recognition by people with TBI have tended to focus on isolated cues, particularly recognition of facial emotion expressions using static photographs2. While this work has been important in informing the development of treatment programs, it does not adequately represent one&#39;s ability to recognize and interpret nonverbal cues of emotion in everyday interactions. Not only do static images provide increased time to interpret the emotion portrayed, they also typically only portray the apex (i.e., maximum representation) of the expressions13-16. Additionally, static images lack the temporal cues that occur with movement12,13,15, and are not representative of the quickly changing facial expressions of emotion encountered in everyday situations. Further, there is evidence to indicate that static and dynamic visual expressions are processed in different areas of the brain, with more accurate responses to dynamic stimuli17-24.
Vocal emotion recognition by people with TBI has also been studied, both with and without meaningful verbal content. It has been suggested that the presence of verbal content increases perceptual demands because accurate interpretation requires simultaneous processing of the nonverbal tone of voice with the semantic content included in the verbal message25. While many studies have shown improved recognition of vocals affect in the absence of meaningful verbal content, Dimoska et al. 25 found no difference in performance. They argue that people with TBI have a bias toward semantic content in affective sentences; so even when the content is semantically neutral or eliminated, they continue to focus on the verbal information in the sentence. Thus, their results did not clearly show whether meaningful verbal content helps or hinders vocal emotion expression.
In addition to the meaningful verbal content that can accompany the nonverbal vocal cues, context is also provided through the social situation itself. Situational context provides background information about the circumstances under which the emotion expression was produced and can thus greatly influence the interpretation of the expression. When evaluating how someone is feeling, we use context to determine if the situation is consistent with that person&#39;s wants and expectations. This ultimately affects how someone feels, so knowledge of the situational context should result in more accurate inferencing of others&#39; emotion26. The ability to do this is referred to as theory of mind, a construct found to be significantly impaired following TBI6,27-31. Milders et al. 8,31 report that people with TBI have significant difficulty making accurate judgments about and understanding the intentions and feelings of characters in brief stories.
While these studies have highlighted deficits in nonverbal and situational emotion processing, it is difficult to generalize the results to everyday social interactions where these cues occur alongside one another and within a social context. To better understand how people with TBI interpret emotion in everyday social interactions, we need to use stimuli that are multimodal in nature. Only two previous studies have included multimodal stimuli as part of their investigation into how people with TBI process emotion cues. McDonald and Saunders15 and Williams and Wood16 extracted stimuli from the Emotion Evaluation Test (EET), which is part of The&#160;Awareness of Social Inference Test26. The EET consists of videotaped vignettes that show male and female actors portraying nonverbal emotion cues while engaging in conversation. The verbal content in the conversations is semantically neutral; cues regarding how the actors are feeling and contextual information are not provided. Thus, the need to process and integrate meaningful verbal content while simultaneously doing this with the nonverbal facial and vocal cues was eliminated. Results of these studies indicated that people with TBI were significantly less accurate than controls in their ability to identify emotion from multimodal stimuli. Since neither study considered the influence of semantic or contextual information on interpretation of emotion expressions, it remains unclear whether the addition of this type of information would facilitate processing because of increased intersensory redundancy or negatively affect perception because of increased cognitive demands.
This article outlines a set of tasks used to compare perception of facial and vocal emotional cues in isolation, and perception of these cues occurring simultaneously within meaningful situational context. The isolations tasks are part of a larger test of nonverbal emotion recognition &#8212; The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy 2 (DANVA2)32. In this protocol, we used the Adult Faces (DANVA-Faces) and Adult Paralanguage (DANVA-Voices) subtests. Each of these subtests includes 24 stimuli, depicting six representations each of happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotions. The DANVA2 requires participants to identify the emotion portrayed using a forced-choice format (4 choices). Here, a fifth option (I don&#39;t know) is provided for both subtests. The amount of time each facial expression was shown was increased from two seconds to five seconds to ensure that we were assessing affect recognition and not speed of processing. We did not alter the adult paralanguage subtest beyond adding the additional choice in the forced-choice response format. Participants heard each sentence one time only. Feedback was not provided in either task.
Film clips were used to assess perception of facial and vocal emotion cues occurring simultaneously within situational context. While the verbal content within these clips did not explicitly state what the characters in the clips were feeling, it was meaningful to the situational context. Fifteen clips extracted from commercial movies and television series were included in the study, each ranging from 45 to 103 (mean = 71.87) seconds. Feedback was not provided to participants during this task. There were three clips representing each of the following emotion categories: happy, sad, angry, fearful, neutral. These clips were chosen based on results of a study conducted with young adults (n = 70)&#160;Zupan, B. &#38; Babbage, D. R. Emotion elicitation stimuli from film clips and narrative text. Manuscript submitted to J Soc Psyc. In that study, participants were presented with six film clips for each of the target emotion categories, and six neutral film clips, ranging from 24 to 127 seconds (mean = 77.3 seconds). While the goal was to include relatively short film clips, each clip chosen for inclusion needed to have sufficient contextual information that it could be understood by viewers without having additional knowledge of the film from which it was taken33.
The clips selected for the current study had been correctly identified in the Zupan and Babbage study Emotion elicitation stimuli from film clips and narrative text, cited above as the target emotion between 83 and 89% for happy, 86 - 93% for sad, 63 - 93% for angry, 77 - 96% for fearful, and 81 - 87% for neutral. While having the same number of exemplars of each emotion category as was in the DANVA2 tasks (n = 6) would have been ideal, we opted for only three due to the increased length of the film clip stimuli compared to stimuli in the DANVA-Faces and DANVA-Voices tasks.
Data from these tasks were collected from 60 participants with TBI and 60 age and gender matched controls. Participants were seen either individually or in small groups (max = 3) and the order of the three tasks was randomized across testing sessions.

<table><tbody><tr><td>Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2</td><td>Department of Pychology, Emory University. Atlanta, GA</td><td></td><td>DANVA-Faces subtest, DANVA-Voices subtest</td></tr><tr><td>Computer</td><td>Apple iMac Desktop, 27&quot; display</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Statistical Analysis Software</td><td>SPSS</td><td></td><td>University Licensed software for data analysis</td></tr><tr><td>Happy Film Clip 1</td><td>Sweet Home Alabama, D&amp;amp;D Films, 2002, Director: A Tennant</td><td></td><td>A man surprises his girlfriend by proposing in a jewelry store</td></tr><tr><td>Happy Film Clip 2</td><td>Wedding Crashers, New Line Cinema, 2005, Director: D. Dobkin</td><td></td><td>A couple is sitting on the beach and flirting while playing a hand game</td></tr><tr><td>Happy Film Clip 3</td><td>Reme-mber the Titans, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, 2000, Director: B. Yakin</td><td></td><td>An African American football coach and his family are accepted by their community when the school team wins the football championship</td></tr><tr><td>Sad Film Clip 1</td><td>Grey&#039;s Anatomy, ABC, 2006, Director: P. Horton</td><td></td><td>A father is only able to communicate with his family using his eyes.&amp;nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>Sad Film Clip 2</td><td>Armageddon, Touchstone Pictures, 1998, Director: M. Bay</td><td></td><td>A daughter is saying goodbye to her father who is in space on a dangerous mission</td></tr><tr><td>Sad Film Clip 3</td><td>Grey&#039;s Anatomy, ABC, 2006, Director: M. Tinker</td><td></td><td>A woman is heartbroken her fiance has died</td></tr><tr><td>Angry Film Clip 1</td><td>Anne of Green Gables, Canadian Broadcast Corporation, 1985, Director: K. Sullivan</td><td></td><td>An older woman speaks openly about a child&#039;s physical appearance in front of her</td></tr><tr><td>Angry Film Clip 2</td><td>Enough, Columbia Pictures, 2002, Director: M. Apted</td><td></td><td>A wife confronts her husband about an affair when she smells another woman&#039;s perfume on his clothing</td></tr><tr><td>Angry Film Clip 3</td><td>Pretty Woman, Touchstone Pictures, 1990, Director: G. Marshall</td><td></td><td>A call girl attempts to purchase clothing in an expensive boutique and is turned away</td></tr><tr><td>Fearful Film Clip 1</td><td>Blood Diamond, Warner Bros Pictures, 2006, Director: E. Zwick</td><td></td><td>Numerous vehicles carrying militia approach a man and his son while they are out walking</td></tr><tr><td>Fearful Film Clip 2</td><td>The Life Before Her Eyes, 2929 Productions, 2007, Directors: V. Perelman</td><td></td><td>Two teenaged gilrs are talking in the school bathroom when they hear gunshots that continue to get closer</td></tr><tr><td>Fearful Film Clip 3</td><td>The Sixth Sense, Barry Mendel Productions, 1999, Director: M. N. Shyamalan</td><td></td><td>A young boy enters the kitchen in the middle of the night and finds his mother behaving very atypically</td></tr><tr><td>Neutral Film Clip 1</td><td>The Other Sister, Mandeville Films, 1999, Director: G. Marshall</td><td></td><td>A mother and daughter are discussing an art book while sitting in their living room</td></tr><tr><td>Neutral Film Clip 2</td><td>The Game, Polygram Filmed Entertainment, 1999, Director: D. Fincher</td><td></td><td>One gentleman is explaining the rules of a game to another</td></tr><tr><td>Neutral Film Clip 3</td><td>The Notebook, New Line Cinema, 2004, Director: N. Cassavetes</td><td></td><td>An older gentleman and his doctor are conversing during a routine check-up</td></tr></tbody></table>

exploring the use of isolated expressions and film clips to evaluate emotion recognition by people with traumatic brain injury

The current study presented 60 people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and 60 controls with isolated facial emotion expressions, isolated vocal emotion expressions, and multimodal (i.e., film clips) stimuli that included contextual cues. All stimuli were presented via computer. Participants were required to indicate how the person in each stimulus was feeling using a forced-choice format. Additionally, for the film clips, participants had to indicate how they felt in response to the stimulus, and the level of intensity with which they experienced that emotion.

This task battery was used to compare emotion recognition for isolated emotion expressions (i.e., face-only; voice-only) and combined emotion expressions (i.e., face and voice) that occur within a situational context. A total of 60 (37 males and 23 females) participants with moderate to severe TBI between the ages of 21 and 63 years (mean = 40.98) and 60 (38 males and 22 females) age -matched Controls (range = 18 to 63; mean = 40.64) completed the three tasks. To partici...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury at JoVE.com

Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury

This paper describes how to implement a battery of behavioral tasks to examine emotion recognition of isolated facial and vocal emotion expressions, and a novel task using commercial television and film clips to assess multimodal emotion recognition that includes contextual cues.

The current study presented 60 people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and 60 controls with isolated facial emotion expressions, isolated vocal emotion ...

exploring-use-isolated-expressions-film-clips-to-evaluate-emotion

Research

JoVE Journal

Behavior

8.9K Views.  Brock University. This paper describes how to implement a battery of behavioral tasks to examine emotion recognition of isolated facial and vocal emotion expressions, and a novel task using commercial television and film clips to assess multimodal emotion recognition that includes contextual cues.

Video: Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Explicit (often verbal) reports are typically used to investigate memory (e.g. "Tell me what you remember about the person you saw at the bank yesterday."), however such reports can often be unreliable or sensitive to response bias 1, and may be unobtainable in some participant populations. Furthermore, explicit reports only reveal when information has reached consciousness and cannot comment on when memories were accessed during processing, regardless of whether the information is subsequently accessed in a conscious manner. Eye movement monitoring (eye tracking) provides a tool by which memory can be probed without asking participants to comment on the contents of their memories, and access of such memories can be revealed on-line 2,3. Video-based eye trackers (either head-mounted or remote) use a system of cameras and infrared markers to examine the pupil and corneal reflection in each eye as the participant views a display monitor. For head-mounted eye trackers, infrared markers are also used to determine head position to allow for head movement and more precise localization of eye position. Here, we demonstrate the use of a head-mounted eye tracking system to investigate memory performance in neurologically-intact and neurologically-impaired adults. Eye movement monitoring procedures begin with the placement of the eye tracker on the participant, and setup of the head and eye cameras. Calibration and validation procedures are conducted to ensure accuracy of eye position recording. Real-time recordings of X,Y-coordinate positions on the display monitor are then converted and used to describe periods of time in which the eye is static (i.e. fixations) versus in motion (i.e., saccades). Fixations and saccades are time-locked with respect to the onset/offset of a visual display or another external event (e.g. button press). Experimental manipulations are constructed to examine how and when patterns of fixations and saccades are altered through different types of prior experience. The influence of memory is revealed in the extent to which scanning patterns to new images differ from scanning patterns to images that have been previously studied 2, 4-5. Memory can also be interrogated for its specificity; for instance, eye movement patterns that differ between an identical and an altered version of a previously studied image reveal the storage of the altered detail in memory 2-3, 6-8. These indices of memory can be compared across participant populations, thereby providing a powerful tool by which to examine the organization of memory in healthy individuals, and the specific changes that occur to memory with neurological insult or decline 2-3, 8-10.

Eye movement monitoring (or eye tracking) reveals where in space the eyes linger, when and for how long. Here, we demonstrate how eye tracking can be used to investigate the integrity of memory in multiple participant populations, without requiring verbal, or otherwise explicit, reports.

Explicit (often verbal) reports are typically used to investigate memory (e.g. "Tell me what you remember about the person you saw at the bank ...

Neuroscience

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection

Recollection of emotional autobiographical memories (AMs) is important to healthy cognitive and affective functioning 1 - remembering positive AMs is associated with increased personal well-being and self-esteem 2, whereas remembering and ruminating on negative AMs may lead to affective disorders 3. Although significant progress has been made in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying AM retrieval in general (reviewed in 4, 5), less is known about the effect of emotion on the subjective re-experience of AMs and the associated neural correlates. This is in part due to the fact that, unlike the investigations of the emotion effect on memory for laboratory-based microevents (reviewed in 6, 7-9), often times AM studies do not have a clear focus on the emotional aspects of remembering personal events (but see 10). Here, we present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of recollecting emotional AMs using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Cues for these memories are collected prior to scanning by means of an autobiographical memory questionnaire (AMQ), therefore allowing for proper selection of emotional AMs based on their phenomenological properties (i.e., intensity, vividness, personal significance). This protocol can be used in healthy and clinical populations alike.

We present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of recollecting emotional autobiographical memories, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This protocol can be used with both healthy and clinical participants.

Recollection of emotional autobiographical memories (AMs) is important to healthy cognitive and affective functioning 1 - remembering positive AMs is ...

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation

The ability to control/regulate emotions is an important coping mechanism in the face of emotionally stressful situations. Although significant progress has been made in understanding conscious/deliberate emotion regulation (ER), less is known about non-conscious/automatic ER and the associated neural correlates. This is in part due to the problems inherent in the unitary concepts of automatic and conscious processing1. Here, we present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of both deliberate and automatic ER using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This protocol allows new avenues of inquiry into various aspects of ER. For instance, the experimental design allows manipulation of the goal to regulate emotion (conscious vs. non-conscious), as well as the intensity of the emotional challenge (high vs. low). Moreover, it allows investigation of both immediate (emotion perception) and long-term effects (emotional memory) of ER strategies on emotion processing. Therefore, this protocol may contribute to better understanding of the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation in healthy behaviour, and to gaining insight into possible causes of deficits in depression and anxiety disorders in which emotion dysregulation is often among the core debilitating features.

We present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of deliberate and automatic emotion regulation, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This protocol can be used in healthy participants, both young and older, as well as in clinical patients.

The ability to control/regulate emotions is an important coping mechanism in the face of emotionally stressful situations. Although significant progress ...

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Memory-Enhancing Effect of Emotion

Emotional events tend to be better remembered than non-emotional events1,2. One goal of cognitive and affective neuroscientists is 
to understand the neural mechanisms underlying this enhancing effect of emotion on memory. A method that has proven particularly influential in the 
investigation of the memory-enhancing effect of emotion is the so-called subsequent memory paradigm (SMP). This method was originally used to investigate the 
neural correlates of non-emotional memories3, and more recently we and others also applied it successfully to studies of emotional memory (reviewed in4, 5-7). 
Here, we describe a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of the memory-enhancing effect of emotion using the SMP in conjunction with 
event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An important feature of the SMP is that it allows separation of brain activity specifically 
associated with memory from more general activity associated with perception. Moreover, in the context of investigating the impact of emotional stimuli, 
SMP allows identification of brain regions whose activity is susceptible to emotional modulation of both general/perceptual and memory-specific processing. 
This protocol can be used in healthy subjects8-15, as well as in clinical patients where there are alterations in the neural correlates of emotion perception 
and biases in remembering emotional events, such as those suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)16, 17.

We present a protocol that uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of the memory-enhancing effect of emotion. This protocol allows identification of brain activity specifically linked to memory-related processing, contrary to more general perceptual processing, and can be used with healthy and clinical populations.

Emotional events tend to be better remembered than non-emotional events1,2. One goal of cognitive and affective neuroscientists is 
to understand the ...

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that the low spatial frequency content in an emotional face mainly activates the amygdala, pulvinar, and superior colliculus especially with fearful faces1-3. These regions constitute the limbic structure in non-conscious perception of emotions and modulate cortical activity either directly or indirectly2. In contrast, the conscious representation of emotions is more pronounced in the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, and somatosensory cortex for directing voluntary attention to details in faces3,4. Asperger&#39;s syndrome (AS)5,6 represents an atypical mental disturbance that affects sensory, affective and communicative abilities, without interfering with normal linguistic skills and intellectual ability. Several studies have found that functional deficits in the neural circuitry important for facial emotion recognition can partly explain social communication failure in patients with AS7-9. In order to clarify the interplay between conscious and non-conscious representations of emotional faces in AS, an EEG experimental protocol is designed with two tasks involving emotionality evaluation of either photograph or line-drawing faces. A pilot study is introduced for selecting face stimuli that minimize the differences in reaction times and scores assigned to facial emotions between the pretested patients with AS and IQ/gender-matched healthy controls. Information from the pretested patients was used to develop the scoring system used for the emotionality evaluation. Research into facial emotions and visual stimuli with different spatial frequency contents has reached discrepant findings depending on the demographic characteristics of participants and task demands2. The experimental protocol is intended to clarify deficits in patients with AS in processing emotional faces when compared with healthy controls by controlling for factors unrelated to recognition of facial emotions, such as task difficulty, IQ and gender.

An EEG experimental protocol is designed to clarify the interplay between conscious and non-conscious representations of emotional faces in patients with Asperger&#39;s syndrome. The technique suggests that patients with Asperger&#39;s syndrome have deficits in non-conscious representation of emotional faces, but have comparable performance in conscious representation with healthy controls.

Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that the low spatial frequency content in an emotional face mainly activates the amygdala, pulvinar, and ...

Use of a Psychophysiological Script-driven Imagery Experiment to Study Trauma-related Dissociation in Borderline Personality Disorder

This protocol offers a detailed description of a psychophysiological experiment using script-driven trauma-related imagery and standardized clinical instruments within a comparative design assessing physiological and psychopathological features of individuals with BPD. This method aims at studying the psychological and physiological effects of trauma-related dissociation. Since the psychodiagnostic classification of trauma-related disorders relies on the observation of evolutionarily determined responses to life-threat, an integrated assessment paradigm for the study of reactions to traumatic memories proposes a very appropriate methodological approach.
The employed script-driven imagery paradigm uses individual recall instructions to activate trauma-related memory networks and prompt associated emotional and physiological responses. These responses are measured by means of self-rating scales and physiological assessments. During the individual recall, participants are asked to vividly imagine traumatic and everyday experiences and other situations triggered by short personalized verbal scripts they authored beforehand together with the experimenters. A wide range of affective reactions and different physiological parameters can be measured. We used this paradigm to investigate dissociative states in BPD and to find physiological and affective correlates of dissociative states. Some of the participants were having severe traumatic antecedents.
To investigate different reaction patterns within the same diagnostic group, participants with different levels of traumatic histories, symptom severities, and co-morbidities should be included. By using short verbal scripts, the level of stress induced to participants is held as low as possible without affecting the validity of the object of investigation.

We present a protocol of personalized script-driven trauma-related imagery and clinical assessments within a comparison design for investigating peritraumatic dissociation (PD), psychophysiological reactions, i.e. heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC), and psychological features of often severely traumatized individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

This protocol offers a detailed description of a psychophysiological experiment using script-driven trauma-related imagery and standardized clinical ...

Use of a Wireless Video-EEG System to Monitor Epileptiform Discharges Following Lateral Fluid-Percussion Induced Traumatic Brain Injury

The lateral fluid percussion injury (FPI) model is well established and has been used to study TBI and post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE). However, considerable variability has been reported for the specific parameters used in different studies that have employed this model, making it difficult to harmonize and interpret the results between laboratories. For example, variability has been reported regarding the size and location of the craniectomy, how the Luer lock hub is placed relative to the craniectomy, the atmospheric pressure applied to the dura and the duration of the pressure pulse. Each of these parameters can impact injury severity, which directly correlates with the incidence of PTE. This has been manifested as a wide range of mortality rates, righting reflex times and incidence of convulsive seizures reported. Here we provide a detailed protocol for the method we have used to help facilitate harmonization between studies. We used FPI in combination with a wireless EEG telemetry system to continuously monitor for electrographic changes and detect seizure activity.&#160; FPI is induced by creating a 5 mm craniectomy over the left hemisphere, between the Bregma and Lambda and adjacent to the lateral ridge. A Luer lock hub is secured onto the skull over the craniectomy. This hub is connected to the FPI device, and a 20-millisecond pressure pulse is delivered directly to the intact dura through pressure tubing connected to the hub via a twist lock connector. Following recovery, rats are re-anesthetized to remove the hub. Five 0.5 mm, stainless steel EEG electrode screws are placed in contact with the dura through the skull and serve as four recording electrodes and one reference electrode. The electrode wires are collected into a pedestal connector which is secured into place with bone cement. Continuous video/EEG recordings are collected for up to 4 weeks post TBI.

Here we present a protocol to induce severe TBI with the lateral fluid percussion injury (FPI) model in adult, male Wistar rats. We also demonstrate the use of a wireless telemetry system to collect continuous video-EEG recordings and monitor for epileptiform discharges consistent with post-traumatic epileptogenesis.&#160;

The lateral fluid percussion injury (FPI) model is well established and has been used to study TBI and post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE). However, ...

Laser Capture Microdissection of Enriched Populations of Neurons or Single Neurons for Gene Expression Analysis After Traumatic Brain Injury

Long-term cognitive disability after TBI is associated with injury-induced neurodegeneration in the hippocampus-a region in the medial temporal lobe that is critical for learning, memory and executive function.1,2 Hence our studies focus on gene expression analysis of specific neuronal populations in distinct subregions of the hippocampus. The technique of laser capture microdissection (LCM), introduced in 1996 by Emmert-Buck, et al.,3 has allowed for significant advances in gene expression analysis of single cells and enriched populations of cells from heterogeneous tissues such as the mammalian brain that contains thousands of functional cell types.4 We use LCM and a well established rat model of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to investigate the molecular mechanisms that underlie the pathogenesis of TBI. Following fluid-percussion TBI, brains are removed at pre-determined times post-injury, immediately frozen on dry ice, and prepared for sectioning in a cryostat. The rat brains can be embedded in OCT and sectioned immediately, or stored several months at -80 &deg;C before sectioning for laser capture microdissection. Additionally, we use LCM to study the effects of TBI on circadian rhythms. For this, we capture neurons from the suprachiasmatic nuclei that contain the master clock of the mammalian brain. Here, we demonstrate the use of LCM to obtain single identified neurons (injured and degenerating, Fluoro-Jade-positive, or uninjured, Fluoro-Jade-negative) and enriched populations of hippocampal neurons for subsequent gene expression analysis by real time PCR and/or whole-genome microarrays. These LCM-enabled studies have revealed that the selective vulnerability of anatomically distinct regions of the rat hippocampus are reflected in the different gene expression profiles of different populations of neurons obtained by LCM from these distinct regions. The results from our single-cell studies, where we compare the transcriptional profiles of dying and adjacent surviving hippocampal neurons, suggest the existence of a cell survival rheostat that regulates cell death and survival after TBI.

We describe how to use laser capture microdissection (LCM) to obtain enriched populations of hippocampal neurons or single neurons from frozen sections of the injured rat brain for subsequent gene expression analysis using quantitative real time PCR and/or whole-genome microarrays.

Long-term cognitive disability after TBI is associated with injury-induced neurodegeneration in the hippocampus-a region in the medial temporal lobe that ...

Stereotactic Atlas-Guided Laser Capture Microdissection of Brain Regions Affected by Traumatic Injury

The ability to isolate specific brain regions of interest can be impeded in tissue disassociation techniques that do not preserve their spatial distribution. Such techniques also potentially skew gene expression analysis because the process itself can alter expression patterns in individual cells. Here we describe a laser capture microdissection (LCM) method to selectively collect specific brain regions affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI) by using a modified Nissl (cresyl violet) staining protocol and the guidance of a rat brain atlas. LCM provides access to brain regions in their native positions and the ability to use anatomical landmarks for identification of each specific region. To this end, LCM has been used previously to examine brain region specific gene expression in TBI. This protocol allows examination of TBI-induced alterations in gene and microRNA expression in distinct brain areas within the same animal. The principles of this protocol can be amended and applied to a wide range of studies examining genomic expression in other disease and/or animal models.

We describe the use of laser capture microdissection to obtain samples of distinct cell populations from different brain regions for gene and microRNA analysis. This technique allows the study of differential effects of traumatic brain injury in specific regions of the rat brain.

The ability to isolate specific brain regions of interest can be impeded in tissue disassociation techniques that do not preserve their spatial ...

Physiological Correlates of Emotion Recognition

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls the activity of the body's internal organs and regulates changes in their activity depending on the current environment. The vagus nerve, which innervates many of the internal organs, is an important part of the system. When our brain senses danger, vagal tone is inhibited, leading to a set of changes in the body designed to make us more prepared to fight or flee; for example, our heart rate increases, our pupils dilate, and we breath more quickly. Conversely, when the vagal system is activated, these physiological responses are inhibited, leading to a calmer state. The vagus nerve, then, acts as a kind of "brake" on our arousal. One interesting consequence of this calmer state is that it tends to promote social interaction-when we are not tensed and afraid of our immediate environment we are instead receptive to interacting with others. Poor functioning of this regulatory mechanism, therefore, may be associated with difficulties in social behavior.
One index of autonomic regulation is heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a measure of how much the gap between one beat and the next varies over time. High HRV means there are continual fluctuations in the heart rate over time, a reflection of successful autonomic regulation. Low HRV means there is consistency of the heart rate over time, a condition associated with poor autonomic regulation. 
In this study we will test the hypothesis that increased HRV is associated with more accurate categorization of emotional stimuli.1,2 Following a study by Park et al., we will measure HRV and test its association on a task that measures skill at perceiving facial emotions.3

Correlating Heart Rate Variability with Emotion Recognition

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls the ...