Introduction: The main objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of preceding pictorial stimulus on the emotional autonomic responses of the subsequent one. Methods: To this effect, physiological signals, including Electrocardiogram (ECG), Pulse Rate (PR), and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) were collected. As these signals have random and chaotic nature, nonlinear dynamics...

Somatic symptoms tend to increase during early adolescence and although youth's social environments and emotional functioning play a role in somatic symptoms, few studies have examined mechanisms through which social interaction could influence youth's somatic wellbeing. Participants were 132 youth (61.6% girls, Mage = 12.61 years, 84.7% Caucasian) and their mothers. Reciprocated best-friend dy...

Postural displacements in response to emotional activation have recently been proposed as a direct and objective index of approach-avoidance behavior in humans. Here, we present the results of an experiment designed to assess spontaneous postural responses to discrete affective pictures, briefly presented in random order of valence. Our findings question the interpretation of phasic postural re...

The evidence for amygdala processing of emotional items outside the focus of attention is mixed. We hypothesized that differences in attentional demands may, at least in part, explain prior discrepancies. In the present study, attention was manipulated by parametrically varying the difficulty of a central task, allowing us to compare responses evoked by unattended emotion-laden faces while the ...

OBJECTIVES How medical students handle negative emotions expressed by simulated patients during Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) has not been fully investigated. We aim to explore (i) whether medical students respond differently to different types of patients' emotional cues; and (2) possible effects of patients' progressive disclosure of emotional cues on students' responses. ...

Emotions can be aroused by various kinds of stimulus modalities. Recent neuroimaging studies indicate that several brain regions represent emotions at an abstract level, i.e., independently from the sensory cues from which they are perceived (e.g., face, body, or voice stimuli). If emotions are indeed represented at such an abstract level, then these abstract representations should also be acti...

Emotional facial expressions play an important role in social communication across primates. Despite major progress made in our understanding of categorical information processing such as for objects and faces, little is known, however, about how the primate brain evolved to process emotional cues. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the processing of ...

Background The opioid drug buprenorphine has been shown to modify responses to emotional stimuli and may have antidepressant properties. In preclinical studies, it shows antidepressant-like and anxiolytic-like effects, and a handful of clinical studies suggest it may reduce symptoms of depression in patients. We have shown that low doses of buprenorphine reduce responses to negative emotional s...

To investigate interhemispheric differences concerning unconscious human emotional responses processed, we measured human skin conductance responses (SCRs) to masked (unseen) emotional stimuli presented to left or right visual fields. Backward masking was used to preclude conscious processing of emotional stimuli. Masked negative or neutral emotional pictures from the International Affective Pi...

Emotional blunting can be found after cerebellar lesions. However, the mechanism of such a modification is not clear. We present a patient with emotional flattening and increased risk taking after left cerebellar infarct who had an impaired autonomic reactivity to negative as compared with positive reinforcement. This impairment was demonstrated by the patient's undifferentiated skin conductanc...