The current study sought to characterize the relationship of the N400 (N4) effect event-related potential to Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers and broader cognition in older adults on the late-life cognitive continuum.

Underground mine workers face many risk factors at work sites that are known to affect the neural system. Observational studies report that these risk factors precede neuromuscular and neurodegenerative disorders, especially in old-age miners. Neurodegenerative disorders have electrophysiological, anatomical, and functional changes long before symptoms are seen in older adults. Therefore, this study investigated whether risks faced by miners at young ages were reflected in electrophysiological signals. Twenty-one underground miners and twenty-two above-ground workers matched with them in terms of age, education, and working duration were included in this study. Participants were recorded with a 20-channel EEG during the resting-state (eyes open and closed; EO-EC) and the perception of the International Affective Picture System Paradigm (IAPS). Time-frequency analyses were performed for alpha frequency. Rs-EEG results showed a statistically significant difference in alpha power between the EO and EC states in the control group. However, there was no statistical difference in alpha power between these two conditions in the miners. Additionally, we noted a more pronounced decrease in alpha responses in the posterior region during EC in the miners. The group's main effects were statistically significant in event-related alpha responses during emotional responses. Accordingly, event-related alpha responses of the miner group were lower than the control group in terms of both power spectrum and phase-locking. Underground mine workers are cognitively and emotionally affected by risks in the work environment. Electrophysiological changes seen in young underground workers may be a harbinger of neurodegenerative disorders in miners' old age. Our research findings may lead to the development of occupational neuroscience, social policies, and worker health, which are necessary to improve working conditions for mineworkers.

Mindfulness meditation is linked to a broad range of psychological and physical health benefits, potentially mediated by changes in neural oscillations. This study explored changes in neural oscillations associated with both immediate and regular mindfulness meditation practice. Electroencephalographic (EEG) data were collected from 40 healthy young adults (M = 20.8, 24 females) during eyes-closed resting and mindfulness meditation states in two separate recording sessions, six weeks apart. Participants were novice meditators, and following the first recording session, were randomly assigned to either a daily mindfulness meditation practice or classical music listening as an active control, which they completed until the second recording session. Traditional bands of delta (1.0-3.5 Hz), theta (4.0-7.5 Hz), alpha (8.0-13.0 Hz), beta (13.5-30.0 Hz), and gamma (30.5-45.0 Hz) were used to explore changes in global EEG spectral amplitude. A significant increase in theta between sessions was observed in both groups and states. Alpha decreased significantly during meditation compared with rest, and a three-way interaction indicated a smaller reduction during meditation between sessions in the mindfulness group. There was a similar interaction in beta, which remained stable between sessions during both rest and meditation in the mindfulness group while varying in the classical music listening group. No significant effects were observed in global delta or gamma amplitudes. These findings suggest that changes in neural oscillations associated with breath-focused mindfulness meditation may be related to processes underlying attention and awareness. Further research is necessary to consolidate these findings, particularly in relation to the associated health benefits.

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have difficulty with regulating their emotions and show reduced functioning of inhibitory control. It was reported previously that OCD patients had delayed antisaccade response and increased error rate only when affective pictures with negative valence served as fixation stimuli in "the antisaccade emotional fixation task". Complementary to the previous research, eye movements and late positive potential (LPP) for fixation stimuli and the presaccadic positivity (PSP) and spike potential (SP) before saccade onset, were compared in two groups of OCD and healthy volunteers. Both groups exhibited increased fixation on emotional images, particularly on unpleasant ones, and showed heightened LPP responses without significant between-group differences. However, individuals with OCD had lower PSP and SP amplitudes for unpleasant images compared to the control group, although there were no differences within conditions for each group. These results suggest that while both groups displayed similar effects of unpleasant images on the involuntary orientation of attention, the findings on presaccadic potentials correlate with behavioral data on increased error rate in antisaccade tasks in OCD. This suggests that emotional dysregulation may contribute to impaired inhibitory control in individuals with OCD.

The late positive potential (LPP) is an ERP component commonly used to study emotional processes and has been proposed as a neuroaffective biomarker for research and clinical uses. These applications, however, require standardized procedures for elicitation and ERP data processing. We evaluated the impact of different EEG preprocessing steps on the LPP's data quality and statistical power. Using a diverse sample of 158 adults, we implemented a multiverse analytical approach to compare preprocessing pipelines that progressively incorporated more steps: artifact detection and rejection, bad channel interpolation, and bad segment deletion. We assessed each pipeline's effectiveness by computing the standardized measurement error (SME) and conducting simulated experiments to estimate statistical power in detecting significant LPP differences between emotional and neutral images. Our findings highlighted that artifact rejection is crucial for enhancing data quality and statistical power. Voltage thresholds to reject trials contaminated by artifacts significantly affected SME and statistical power. Once artifact detection was optimized, further steps provided minor improvements in data quality and statistical power. Importantly, different preprocessing pipelines yielded similar outcomes. These results underscore the robustness of the LPP's affective modulation to preprocessing choices and the critical role of effective artifact management. By refining and standardizing preprocessing procedures, the LPP can become a reliable neuroaffective biomarker, supporting personalized clinical interventions for affective disorders.

The aim of our study is to examine the persistence of EEG coherence in the fundamental waves-delta, theta, alpha, and beta-both across spatial domains (within the brain, interhemispheric) and over extended periods (interannual). The long-term stability of a specific EEG wave coherence suggests its potential as a neural fingerprint. A total of 28 participants were included in the intrahemispheric-interannual FFT coherence analysis, comparing EEG data collected years apart. The average interannual interval between the first and second EEG recordings was 7.11 ± 4.56 years, with a range from 1.88 to 19.19 years. The combined data from the two EEG sessions shared 62.7 % of their variance, underscoring significant overlap in their information content. The interannual canonical correlation between the first and second EEGs was 0.792, indicating a strong relationship over time. Overall, alpha coherence, particularly in the frontal lobe, showed marked long-term stability, suggesting it as a strong candidate for an EEG fingerprint. Notably, when comparing fundamental wave coherences in the occipital lobe between the first and second EEGs, only the beta coherence exhibited a remarkable correlation over the years.

Previous emotion regulation studies revealed that emotional distraction decreases unpleasant emotions. This study examined whether distraction tasks decrease unpleasant task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) and unpleasant emotions when recalling stressful daily interpersonal events. Amygdala activity was examined to assess implicit emotional changes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The behavioral data of 20 university students (mean age: 20.35 ± 1.42 years; range: 18-24 years) and fMRI data of 18 students were examined. As an emotion induction procedure, participants initially freely recalled memories of daily stressful interpersonal events and then responded to a series of questions about their recalled memories presented on a monitor. In the distraction experiment, the questions were re-represented as an emotional stimulation; a distraction task (nonconstant or constant finger tapping) or rest condition was then performed, and ratings were given for attentional state, thought types conceived during the tasks, and emotional state. Decreases in unpleasant emotions and TUTs were defined as distraction effects. We found that unpleasant TUTs decreased in the nonconstant relative to rest condition (p < .05). Furthermore, increased right amygdala activation positively correlated with unpleasant emotions, and bilateral amygdala activation correlated with unpleasant TUTs only in the rest condition, indicating the existence of amygdala activation associated with unpleasant emotions and thoughts. However, such associations were not under nonconstant or constant conditions, indicating distraction effects. Notably, this study showed that emotional distraction can decrease the degree of unpleasant emotions and the occurrence of unpleasant thoughts regarding common daily emotions.

We compared how different levels of cognitive load affect frontal P3 (fP3) Event-Related Potential (ERP) to novel sounds. Previous studies demonstrated the predictive value of the probe-elicited frontal P3 (fP3) ERP for subsequent detection failures. They also demonstrated how fP3 is reduced when performing visual and/or manual and/or cognitively demanding tasks. These results are consistent with fP3 indexing orienting to novels or, more neutrally: susceptibility. Here, we tested how fP3 is affected by a threefold variation of cognitive load induced by the verb (generation) task. Participants heard a noun and either listened to it, repeated it, or generated a semantically related verb. These conditions were manipulated between groups. One group (N = 16) experienced the listen and repeat condition; the other group (N = 16) experienced the listen and generate condition. When fP3 was probed 0 or 200 ms after noun offset, it was reduced (relative to no noun) only while repeating or generating, not while listening. An additional probe-elicited ERP was identified as novelty-related negativity, and its contaminating influence on fP3 estimation accounted for by a novel vector-filter procedure. We conclude that cognitive load does not affect fP3-indexed susceptibility. Instead, fP3-indexed susceptibility is affected by presentation of the stimulus, with the most pronounced effect in conditions where a vocal response is needed (i.e., repeat or generate, but not listen), independent of the complexity of the response.

Trait impulsivity, characterized by the tendency to act without adequate consideration of potential consequences in pursuit of immediate rewards, is a recognized vulnerability marker for substance use disorders (SUDs). Cognitive control deficits are implicated in the manifestation of high trait impulsivity, and intraindividual reaction time variability (IIRTV), an indicator of cognitive control, may influence trait impulsivity. Baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reflects vagal tone, serves as an index of physiological self-regulation, which has been demonstrated to be related to trait impulsivity. However, it is unclear whether IIRTV is associated with trait impulsivity and whether it interacts with baseline RSA to influence trait impulsivity. A total of 113 males with SUDs participated (M = 46.04 years, SD = 11.53) in this study. Trait impulsivity was assessed using a self-report questionnaire, IIRTV was measured through a two-choice oddball task, and baseline RSA was obtained through the collection of electrocardiogram (ECG) data. The results indicated that IIRTV interacted with baseline RSA to influence trait impulsivity. These findings suggested that cognitive control indexed by IIRTV, might represent a central nervous correlate of trait impulsivity, and that it interacted with vagal tone indexed by baseline RSA, to influence trait impulsivity.

Successful reappraisal modulates the impact of emotion-inducing stimuli through reinterpretation of their meaning and decreases subjective emotional experience. Here the question is addressed how the altered emotional experience is related to altered electro-cortical responses, and about the neural mechanisms underlying regulation itself. To this end, we recorded EEG during a cued emotion-regulation paradigm including negative and neutral pictures. Firstly, based on hypothesis-driven analysis of the Late Positive Potential (LPP), we found that the early fronto-centro-parietal LPP (400-1000 ms) increased when passively viewing negative versus neutral pictures. Reappraisal did not decrease this LPP. Instead, only during reappraisal, the emotion effect on the parietal LPP was sustained until the picture offset. Secondly, we applied a localizer approach to uncover reappraisal effects with other spatiotemporal characteristics than the traditional LPP but did not observe such effects. Despite indications of theta oscillations being associated with cognitive and/or affective control, no significant effects were found on theta activity for emotion processing or reappraisal. Our findings suggest that emotion regulation may affect the LPP in several ways, depending on the task design and including affective as well as more cognitive influences. A potential role for theta in emotion regulation remains to be elucidated.

Previous studies that use decoding methods and EEG to investigate the neural representation of the category information of visual objects focused mainly on consciously processed visual objects. It remains unclear whether the category information of unconsciously processed visual objects can be decoded and whether the decoding performance is different for consciously and unconsciously processed visual objects. The present study compared the neural decoding of the animacy category of visible and invisible visual objects via EEG and decoding methods. The results revealed that the animacy of visible visual objects could be decoded above the chance level by the P200, N300, and N400, but not by the early N/P100. However, the animacy of invisible visual objects could not be decoded above the chance level by neither early nor late ERP components. The decoding accuracy was greater for visible visual objects than that for invisible visual objects for the P200, N300 and N400. These results suggested that access to animacy category information for visual objects requires conscious processing.

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) is a mechanism that regulates our internal environment. In recent years, the interest in how tactile stimuli presented directly to the body affect ANS function and cortical processing in humans has been renewed. However, it is not yet clear how subtle tactile stimuli below the level of consciousness affect human heart rate and cortical processing. To examine this, subthreshold electrical stimuli were presented to the left forearm of 43 participants during an image-viewing task, and electrocardiogram (ECG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) data were collected. The changes in the R-wave interval of the ECG immediately after the subthreshold electrical presentation and heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP), the afferent signal processing of cardiac activity, were measured. The results showed that heart rate decelerated immediately after the presentation of subthreshold electrical stimuli. The HEP during stimulus presentation was amplified for participants with greater heart rate acceleration immediately after this deceleration. The magnitude of these effects depended on the type of the subthreshold tactile stimuli. The results suggest that even with subthreshold stimulation, the changes in autonomic activity associated with orienting response and related afferent signal processing differ depending on the clarity of the tactile stimuli.

Interoception is crucial to the experience of bodily complaints in chronic conditions. Fear can distort the perception of sensations like breathlessness and pain, yet few studies investigated the effects of conditioned fear on both self-report and neural processing of these sensations. In the current study, we conditioned fear of neutral female faces in healthy adults, pairing certain faces (CS+) with an aversive scream. In Experiment 1, we delivered paired inspiratory occlusions during the viewing of the faces. We collected self-reported intensity and unpleasantness of occlusions, and measured N1 and P2 amplitudes of the respiratory-related evoked potential (RREP) in the electroencephalogram, as well as neural gating (the ratio of N1 response to the second over the first occlusion, S2/S1). Skin conductance and self-reported fear increased in response to CS+ faces, and perception of occlusions increased during fear conditioning (FC) relative to baseline, with higher unpleasantness and RREP amplitudes during CS+ relative to CS- trials. We found no effects on neural gating. In Experiment 2, we used the same FC protocol, and delivered paired electrocutaneous pulses during the viewing of the faces. We measured intensity/unpleasantness, fear, N1/P2 amplitudes of the somatosensory evoked potential (SEP), and neural gating. While skin conductance and fear increased, no perceptual effects were found. Unexpectedly, SEP amplitudes decreased and neural gating increased during FC, likely due to habituation. The current results indicate that FC increases the perception and neural processing of respiratory stimuli specifically, consistent with previous literature on respiratory psychophysiology and fearful states.

Inadequate sleep significantly impacts an individual's health by compromising inhibitory control and self-regulation abilities. This study employed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the functional connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the whole brain in 16 healthy adult males after 36 h of total sleep deprivation. Additionally, this study investigated alterations in individuals' inhibitory control functions and physiological mechanisms following sleep deprivation. The results showed a significant increase in functional connectivity between the ACC, the left angular gyrus, and the right hippocampus following 36 h of continuous sleep deprivation. Conversely, functional connectivity was notably decreased between the ACC and the right insular cortex, right paracingulate gyrus, and bilateral putamen. Furthermore, changes in ACC functional connectivity were significantly correlated with alterations in behavioral performance in the go/no-go task after sleep deprivation. This study contributes to understanding brain network mechanisms in the anterior cingulate gyrus after sleep deprivation. It clarifies the relationship between functional connectivity changes in the anterior cingulate gyrus and inhibitory control post-sleep deprivation.

Listening to heartbeat sounds have been found to affect cardiac activity and behavior. However, less is known about the effects of these stimuli on brain activity and cognition. Alpha oscillations (8-13 Hz) are considered markers of cortical activation. Frontal alpha Asymmetry (FαA) reflects the valence attributed to the stimulus and the tendency to approach/avoid it.

Sadness is commonly perceived as an affective state with negative valence. However, studies on the psychological and physiological effects of sadness have yielded mixed results. We proposed a systematic analysis of sadness, taking into account an additional dimension - the intensity of approach motivation, understood as an urge to move toward. We induced low and high approach motivation sadness while measuring electrical brain activity (EEG). We predicted that low approach motivation sadness and high approach sadness would evoke different patterns of frontal alpha activity. In our study, 41 participants were randomly assigned to a low or high approach motivation sadness induction. A significant interaction was observed when comparing low and high approach motivation sadness across the presented stories, as measured by the frontal alpha asymmetry index. To furtherly explore this effect, we conducted cluster-based permutation analysis on individual alpha peak-centered spectra, which revealed a more centrally diffused effect over the frontal areas in both hemispheres as well a significant activation over the occipital region. Low approach motivation sadness was associated with reduced alpha power over frontal areas, while high approach motivation sadness was associated with increased alpha power in the same region, both in comparison to neutral condition. These results might reflect Default Mode Network activation or the projection from occipital area. Based on these results, we propose a new perspective on sadness as a heterogeneous state that should be evaluated based on the intensity of approach motivation, rather than solely on its valence.

To explore the characteristic changes of multiple ERP components associated with attention impairments in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

This experiment (N = 113) tested whether personal choice vs. external assignment of task characteristics moderates the effect of incidental affective stimulation on effort-related cardiovascular response in a "do your best" task context. When participants could choose themselves the color of the stimuli (i.e., a series of letters to be recalled) used in a memory task, we expected high task commitment and willingness to mobilize resources, strong action shielding, and thus low receptivity for incidental affective influences. By contrast, when the color was externally assigned, we expected low willingness to mobilize resources, weak action shielding, and thus strong affective influences on effort. As predicted, participants in the assigned color condition showed stronger cardiac pre-ejection period reactivity during task execution when exposed to sad music than when exposed to happy music. These music effects did not appear among participants who could personally choose the color. Here, effort was high independently of the happy or sad background music. The present study demonstrates the moderating effect of personal choice on resource mobilization in a task of unfixed difficulty with happy and sad background music as incidental affective influence.

Although individuals with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) often manifest altered error monitoring, evidence using event-related potentials (ERPs) to index these cortical processes is inconsistent. Therefore, this meta-analysis study aimed to comprehensively compare the error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe) between individuals with TBI and healthy controls (HC) from the existing literature.

We investigated the effects of sleep duration and light intensity on effort-related cardiovascular response. We predicted that due to reduced alertness after shortened sleep duration perceived task demand should increase which should lead to higher mental effort. Similarly, lower light intensity should also lead to lower alertness, and therefore to higher perceived task demand and therefore higher effort. Effort was operationalized as sympathetic beta-adrenergic impact on the heart and assessed through reactivity of the cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) and systolic blood pressure (SBP). Twenty-four healthy volunteers underwent two experimental sessions, one after 5 and one after 8 h of sleep opportunity in a counterbalanced order (within-person). Experimental lighting conditions (100 lx vs. 500 lx, within-person) were applied for 15 min, and for following 5-min modified auditory Sternberg task. In line with our hypothesis, results showed a stronger SBP (and DBP) reactivity after sleep restriction (ps < 0.001), indicating higher effort exertion. Contrary to our prediction, 500 lx light led to higher PEP reactivity compared to 100 lx (p = 0.032). Overall, our results provide the first experimental evidence that shorter sleep duration leads to higher mental effort.

Reward processing deficit is a core feature of schizophrenia, however, it remains unclear whether reward processing is impaired in individuals with high schizotypy. In this study, 27 high schizotypal trait and 25 control group children were screened by the Chinese version of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire for Children (SPQC). We recorded their brain activity (event-related potentials, ERPs) while they completed a simple gambling task. In the early semi-automatic processing stage, small losses s evoked a more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN) in the high schizotypy group than that in control group, and the large wins evoked a less positive reward positivity (RewP) in the high schizotypy group than that in the control group. In the later cognitive appraisal stage, the Feedback-P3 (Fb-P3) amplitude was smaller in the schizotypy group than in control group. These results provided evidence that the abnormalities of outcome evaluation exist in the schizotypy children. Pending replications and longitudinal studies, the FRN, RewP and the P3 might represent a psychophysiological marker of risk for schizophrenia.