Biology subjects

Kessel, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Kessel, D..

8 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

INFLUENCE OF PREMENSTRUAL SYNDROME ON ATTENTIONAL CAPTURE BY EXPRESSIONS IN THE LUTEAL PHASE

Research on female health has increased thanks to the growing interest in womens well-being. Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) is characterized by its high incidence and negative emotional symptoms during the luteal phase. While various studies suggest that the menstrual cycle affects emotional processing, the role of PMS has barely been investigated. Prior evidence suggests that the menstrual cycle does not modulate the attentional capture by emotional faces (Alvarez et al., 2022). This study aims to explore PMSs impact on this phenomenon. Forty-seven women performed an attentional capture task in both phases of the menstrual cycle, with emotional faces as distractors. Both behavioral performance and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Additionally, premenstrual symptoms were monitored over two menstrual cycles. Results showed no significant interaction effect of PMS, either at the behavioral or ERP levels. However, emotional stimuli, particularly angry faces, consistently captured attention more than neutral ones, as reflected in enhanced P1 and N170 components. These results indicate no evidence that PMS modulates exogenous attention to emotional stimuli. Future studies should consider individual affective states, such as depressive and anxiety symptoms associated with PMS, rather than PMS as a category, to further investigate the potential effects of PMS on attentional capture.

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bioRxiv2024

Emotional Distractors Capture Attention even at Very Low Contrast Levels: ERP evidence

Emotional visual stimuli, whether appealing or aversive, preferentially capture exogenous attention due to their evolutionary significance. This study assessed whether such capacity persists at low contrast levels, where stimuli are minimally perceived. To this end, we recorded behavioral and electrophysiological (event-related potentials, ERPs) indices of attentional capture from 38 participants who were exposed to negative, neutral, and positive scenes, each presented at four distinct contrast levels. These contrast levels had previously resulted in a correct recognition rate of up to 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% in a previous sample of 235 participants. Participants were presented with these scenes as distractors while simultaneously performing a perceptual task involving line orientation discrimination. The ERP results confirmed the expected emotional effect on exogenous attention and, critically, unveiled its persistence across all contrast levels. Specifically, occipito-parietal P1 (88-119 ms) was larger for negative than for positive distractors, while in a spreaded N2 component, positive distractors elicited larger amplitudes relative to both negative (213-354 ms) and neutral (213-525 ms) images. These findings reinforce the advantage of emotional distractors in accessing neural processing automatically and highlight the existence of a temporal negativity bias. Importantly, our novel findings emphasize the robustness of this exogenous attention pattern, present even under limited perceptual conditions.

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bioRxiv2024

An extremely fast neural mechanism to detect emotional visual stimuli: A two-experiment study

Defining the brain mechanisms underlying initial emotional evaluation is a key but unexplored clue to understand affective processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs), especially suited for investigating this issue, were recorded in two experiments (n=36 and n=35). We presented emotionally negative (spiders) and neutral (wheels) silhouettes homogenized regarding their visual parameters. In Experiment 1, stimuli appeared at fixation or in the periphery (200 trials per condition and location), the former eliciting a N40 (39 milliseconds) and a P80 (or C1: 80 milliseconds) component, and the latter only a P80. In Experiment 2, stimuli were presented only at fixation (500 trials per condition). Again, a N40 (45 milliseconds) was observed, followed by a P100 (or P1: 105 milliseconds). Analyses revealed significantly greater N40-C1P1 peak-to-peak amplitudes for spiders in both experiments, and ANCOVAs showed that these effects were not explained by C1P1 alone, but that processes underlying N40 significantly contributed. Source analyses pointed to V1 as a N40 focus (more clearly in Experiment 2). Sources for C1P1 included V1 (P80) and V2/LOC (P80 and P100). These results and their timing point to low-order structures (such as visual thalamic nuclei or superior colliculi) or the visual cortex itself, as candidates for initial evaluation structures.

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bioRxiv2023

Perception of near-threshold visual stimuli is influenced by pre-stimulus alpha-band amplitude but not by alpha phase

Ongoing brain activity preceding visual stimulation has been suggested to shape conscious perception. The underlying mechanisms are still under debate, although alpha oscillations have been pointed out as the main explanatory candidate. According to the pulsed-inhibition framework, bouts of functional inhibition arise in each alpha cycle, allowing information to be processed in a pulsatile manner. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that perceptual outcome can be influenced by the specific phase of alpha oscillations prior to the stimulus onset, although empirical findings are controversial. In this study, we aimed to shed light on the role of pre-stimulus alpha oscillations in visual perception. To this end, we recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) activity while participants performed three near-threshold visual detection tasks with different attentional involvement: a no-cue task, a non-informative cue task (50% cue validity), and an informative cue task (100% cue validity). Cluster-based permutation statistics were complemented with Bayesian analyses to test the effect of pre-stimulus oscillatory amplitude and phase on visual awareness. We additionally examined whether these effects differed on trials with low and high oscillatory amplitude, as expected from the pulsed-inhibition theory. Our results show a clear effect of pre-stimulus alpha amplitude on conscious perception, but only when alpha fluctuated spontaneously and was not modulated by attention, supporting the notion that alpha-band power indexes neural excitability. In contrast, we did not find any evidence that pre-stimulus alpha phase influences the perceptual outcome, not even when differentiating between low and high amplitude trials. Furthermore, Bayesian analysis provided moderate evidence in favor of the absence of phase effects. Taken together, our results challenge the central theoretical predictions of the pulsed-inhibition framework, at least for the particular experimental conditions used here.

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bioRxiv2022

Menstrual cycle and exogenous attention toward emotional expressions

Several studies suggest that the menstrual cycle affects emotional processing. However, these results may be biased by including women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) in the samples. PMS is characterized by negative emotional symptomatology, such as depression and/or anxiety, during the luteal phase. This study aimed to explore the modulation of exogenous attention to emotional facial expressions as a function of the menstrual cycle in women without PMS. For this purpose, 55 women were selected (from an original volunteer sample of 790) according to rigorous exclusion criteria. Happy, angry, and neutral faces were presented as distractors, while both behavioral performance in a perceptual task and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. This task was applied during both phases of the menstrual cycle (luteal and follicular, counterbalanced), and premenstrual symptomatology was monitored daily. Traditional and Bayesian ANOVAs on behavioral data (reaction times and errors in the task) and ERP indices (P1, N170, N2, and LPP amplitudes) confirmed the expected lack of an interaction of phase and emotion. Taken together, these results indicate that women free of PMS present steady exogenous attention levels to emotionally positive and negative stimuli regardless of the menstrual phase.

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bioRxiv2021

Fast unconscious processing of emotional stimuli in early stages of the visual cortex

Several cortical and subcortical brain areas have been reported to be sensitive to the emotional content of subliminal stimuli. However, the timing of these activations remains unclear. Our scope was to detect the earliest cortical traces of visual unconscious processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) from 43 participants. Subliminal spiders (emotional) and wheels (neutral), sharing similar low-level visual parameters, were presented at two different locations (fixation and periphery). The differential (peak to peak) amplitude from CP1 (77 milliseconds from stimulus onset) to C2 (100 milliseconds), two early visual ERP components originated in V1/V2 according to source localization analyses, was analyzed via Bayesian and traditional analyses. Spiders elicited greater CP1-C2 amplitudes than wheels when presented at fixation. This fast effect of subliminal stimulation -not reported previously to the best of our knowledge-has implications in several debates: i) the amygdala cannot be mediating these effects, ii) latency of other evaluative structures recently proposed, such as the visual thalamus, is compatible with these results, iii) the absence of peripheral stimuli effects points to a relevant role of the parvocellular visual system in unconscious processing.

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bioRxiv2021

Suppression of alpha-band power underlies exogenous attention to emotional distractors

Alpha-band oscillations (8-14 Hz) are essential for attention and perception processes by facilitating the selection of relevant information. Directing visuospatial endogenous (voluntary) attention to a given location consistently results in a power suppression of alpha activity over occipito-parietal areas contralateral to the attended visual field. In contrast, the neural oscillatory dynamics underlying the involuntary capture of attention, or exogenous attention, are currently under debate. By exploiting the inherent capacity of emotionally salient visual stimuli to capture attention, we aimed to investigate whether exogenous attention is characterized by either a reduction or an increase in alpha-band activity. Electroencephalographic activity was recorded while participants completed a Posner visuospatial cueing task, in which a lateralized image with either positive, negative, or neutral emotional content competed with a target stimulus presented in the opposite hemifield. Compared with trials with no distractors, alpha power was reduced over occipital regions contralateral to distracting images. This reduction of alpha activity turned out to be functionally relevant, as it correlated with impaired behavioural performance on the ongoing task and was enhanced for distractors with negative valence. Taken together, our results demonstrate that visuospatial exogenous attention is characterized by a suppression of alpha-band activity contralateral to distractor location, similar to the oscillatory underpinnings of endogenous attention. Further, these results highlight the key role of exogenous attention as an adaptive mechanism for the efficient detection of biologically salient stimuli. HighlightsO_LIExogenous attention is indexed by alpha suppression contralateral to distractors. C_LIO_LIAlpha power decrease is enhanced by distractors with negative emotional valence. C_LIO_LILower levels of alpha power correlate with poorer task performance accuracy. C_LIO_LIThe negativity bias in exogenous attention might reflect an adaptive mechanism. C_LI

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bioRxiv2019

Neural signals relating future cooperation from prisoner’s dilemma feedback are outcome-contingent

Electing whether to cooperate with someone else is well typified in the iterated prisoners dilemma (iPD) game, although the neural processes that unfold after its distinct outcomes have been only partly described. Recent theoretical models emphasize the ubiquity of intuitive cooperation, raising questions on the neural timelines involved. We studied the outcome stage of an iPD with electroencephalography (EEG) methods. Results showed that neural signals that are modulated by the iPD outcomes can also be indicative of future choice, in an outcome-dependent manner: (i) after zero-gain suckers payoffs (unreciprocated cooperation), a participants decision thereafter may be indicated by changes to the feedback-related negativity (FRN); (ii) after one-sided non-cooperation (participant gain), by the P3; (iii) after mutual cooperation, by late frontal delta-band modulations. Critically, faster choices to reciprocate cooperation were predicted, on a single-trial basis, by P3 and frontal delta modulations at the immediately preceding trial. Delta band signaling is considered in relation to homeostatic regulation processing in the literature. The findings relate feedback to decisional processes in the iPD, providing a first neural account of the brief timelines implied in heuristic modes of cooperation.

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