RESUMO
Ostracism is characterized by a social pain provoked by being excluded and ignored. In order to address the effects of social ostracism in virtual non-physical interactions, we developed a more realistic paradigm as an alternative to Cyberball and assessed its effects on participant's expression of basic social needs, emotional experience and painful feeling. The chat room consisted of controlled social dialogue interactions between participants and two other (confederate) chat room partners. Exclusion was manipulated by varying the number of messages a participant received (15% and 33% in exclusion and inclusion, respectively). Analysis of participant (N = 54) responses revealed that exclusion induced a lower experience of basic-need states and greater anger, compared with included participants. In addition, excluded participants reported higher levels of two specific self-pain feelings, namely tortured and hurt. Our findings suggest that this procedure is effective in inducing social ostracism in a realistic and yet highly controlled experimental procedure.
Assuntos
Ira , Emoções , Distância Psicológica , Mídias Sociais , Adolescente , Adulto , Comunicação , Feminino , Humanos , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Human action perception is so powerful that people can identify movement efficiently in the absence of pictorial information, such as in point-light displays. Interest is growing in this type of stimulus for research in neuroscience. This interest stems from the advantage of separating the component of pure human action kinematics from other pictorial information, such as facial expression and muscle contraction. Although several groups have previously developed datasets of human point-light actions, due to the lack of datasets composed of daily actions with short durations, we developed 20 biological and 40 control (scrambled) point-light movements by using the technique of recording people wearing reflector patches. The videos are about 1 s long. Subsequently, we performed a judgment task in which 100 participants (50 male and 50 female) evaluated each video according to three categories: human action resemblance, performed action, and gender of actor. We present the mean scores of each evaluation for each video, and further propose a selection of the most suitable videos to be used as human point-light action displays and scrambled point-light displays for control. Finally, we discuss our findings on the gender attributions of the point-light displays.
Assuntos
Conjuntos de Dados como Assunto , Percepção de Movimento , Movimento , Percepção Visual , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Gravação em Vídeo , Adulto JovemRESUMO
In the so-called McGurk illusion, when the synchronized presentation of the visual stimulus /ga/ is paired with the auditory stimulus /ba/, people in general hear it as /da/. Multisensory integration processing underlying this illusion seems to occur within the Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS). Herein, we present evidence demonstrating that bilateral cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of this area can decrease the McGurk illusion-type responses. Additionally, we show that the manipulation of this audio-visual integrated output occurs irrespective of the number of eye-fixations on the mouth of the speaker. Bilateral anodal tDCS of the Parietal Cortex also modulates the illusion, but in the opposite manner, inducing more illusion-type responses. This is the first demonstration of using non-invasive brain stimulation to modulate multisensory speech perception in an illusory context (i.e., both increasing and decreasing illusion-type responses to a verbal audio-visual integration task). These findings provide clear evidence that both the superior temporal and parietal areas contribute to multisensory integration processing related to speech perception. Specifically, STS seems fundamental for the temporal synchronization and integration of auditory and visual inputs. For its part, posterior parietal cortex (PPC) may adjust the arrival of incoming audio and visual information to STS thereby enhancing their interaction in this latter area.
RESUMO
Food craving can be defined as the "urge to eat a specific food". Previous findings suggest impairment of inhibitory control, specifically a regulatory deficit in the lateral prefrontal circuitry that is associated with a compulsion for food. As demonstrated by three previous studies, bilateral transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (anode right/cathode left) reduces food craving and caloric intake. We designed the present study to evaluate the neural mechanisms that underlie these effects. We replicated the design of one of these previous studies but included electroencephalographic assessments to register evoked potentials in a Go/No-go task that contained pictures of food and furniture (a control visual stimulus). We collected data from nine women (mean age = 23.4 ± 2 years) in a crossover experiment. We observed that active DLPFC tDCS (anode right/cathode left), compared with sham stimulation, reduced the frontal N2 component and enhanced the P3a component of responses to No-go stimuli, regardless of the stimulus condition (food or furniture). Active tDCS was also associated with a reduction in caloric intake. We discuss our findings in the context of cortico-subcortical processing of craving and tDCS effects on inhibitory control neural circuitry.
Assuntos
Fissura , Sinais (Psicologia) , Ingestão de Energia , Comportamento Alimentar , Alimentos , Inibição Psicológica , Estimulação Transcraniana por Corrente Contínua/métodos , Adulto , Apetite , Fissura/fisiologia , Estudos Cross-Over , Eletroencefalografia , Potenciais Evocados , Feminino , Humanos , Córtex Pré-Frontal , Controles Informais da Sociedade , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Somatosensory integration is a critical cognitive function for human social interaction. Though somatosensory integration has been highly explored in cognitive studies; only a few studies have explored focal modulation of cortical excitability using a speech perception paradigm. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the effects of tDCS applied over the temporal cortex of healthy subjects during a go-no-go task in which stimuli were shapes and non-words. Twenty-eight subjects were randomized to receive cathodal, anodal or sham tDCS bilaterally over the superior temporal cortex (the reference electrode was on deltoid) in a counterbalanced order. The effects on judgment of congruency between shapes and non-words in healthy volunteers were measured by a go-no-go task. Our findings show a significant modification of performance according to the polarity of stimulation, task and subject gender. We found that men performed worse on the no-go condition for congruent stimuli during cathodal tDCS. For reaction time, on the other hand, there was a similar effect for anodal and cathodal stimulation. There were significantly faster responses on incongruent trials during both anodal and cathodal tDCS. Along with previous literature showing gender differences in tasks associated with speech perception, the findings of this study provide additional evidence suggesting that men may have a more focal and restricted neural processing in this multisensory integration task.
Assuntos
Cognição , Reconhecimento Visual de Modelos , Lobo Temporal/fisiologia , Comportamento Verbal , Adulto , Estimulação Elétrica , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Distribuição Aleatória , Fatores Sexuais , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative and progressive disease related to a gradual decline in cognitive functions such as memory, attention, perceptual-spatial abilities, language, and executive functions. Recent evidence has suggested that interventions promoting neural plasticity can induce significant cognitive gains especially in subjects at risk of or with mild AD. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are non-invasive techniques that can induce significant and long-lasting changes in focal and non-focal neuroplasticity. In this review, we present initial preliminary evidence that TMS and tDCS can enhance performance in cognitive functions typically impaired in AD. Also, we reviewed the initial six studies on AD that presented early findings showing cognitive gains such as in recognition memory and language associated with TMS and tDCS treatment. In addition, we showed that TMS has also been used to assess neuroplasticity changes in AD supporting the notion that cortical excitability is changed in AD due to the neurodegenerative process. Due to the safe profile, cost of these tools, and initial clinical trials results, further studies are warranted in order to replicate and extend the initial findings of rTMS and tDCS as cognitive enhancers in AD. Further trials should explore different targets of stimulation along with different paradigms of stimulation including combination with behavioural interventions.