Imaginal exposure is a standard procedure of cognitive behavioral therapy, often used when in vivo exposure is not possible, too stressful or too expensive. The Bio-Informational Theory implies that imaginal exposure is effective due to perceptual proximity of mental imagery to real events, whereas empirical findings suggest that propositional thought could be sufficient, i.e., thinking about the fear stimulus without seeing it in the mind's eye. To investigate whether mental imagery is crucial for the success of imaginal exposure, participants with the rare state of aphantasia (= absence of visual mental imagery) and two control groups were subjected to a fear conditioning paradigm followed by imaginal exposure and a reinstatement procedure. During imaginal exposure, the first control group (n = 30) stared at a bright screen to disrupt visual imagery by incoming luminance (= simulated aphantasia), while the second control group (n = 30) and participants with actual aphantasia (n = 30) kept their eyes closed. Results showed successful fear extinction in all groups, thus demonstrating that mental imagery is not necessary for successful fear extinction.

“Metacontrol” refers to the capacity to effectively balance persistence and flexibility according to situational circumstances. Recent studies from our lab have demonstrated the crucial role of cortical noise in reflecting the associations between emotion and metacontrol by employing the aperiodic exponent analyzed using the FOOOF toolbox serving as an appropriate index reflecting metacontrol. Specifically, we found higher exponents for negative faces than both neutral and positive faces. In the present study, we designed a new paradigm composed of three tasks with varying levels of task-relevance, to further elucidate the nature of the relationship between metacontrol and emotions. The emotional stimulus (including positive and negative pictures) is entirely task-irrelevant in Task 1, irrelevant but appearing together with the relevant stimulus in Task 2, and task-relevant in Task 3. We expected that the negative valence would increase the aperiodic exponent the most in Task 3 compared to the other tasks. As predicted, the aperiodic exponents in Task 2 and Task 3 were significantly higher than that of task 1, indicating that higher task-relevance in negative emotional state leads to a larger increase in aperiodic exponents and thus cortical noise reduces the most. Our results are in line with stimulus-response compatibility research, where the impact of contextual stimuli (in our case the different valance of emotions) depends on their task-relevance.

One of the best replicated and most famous effects in experimental psychology, the Stroop effect, describes interferences in cognitive processing when a color word is printed in a conflicting ink color. Recently, the controversial hypothesis was proposed that reading the color word triggers visual imagery, which then interferes with the perceived color, leading to the Stroop effect. Thus, the Stroop effect should not occur in aphantasics, i.e., in individuals with impaired mental imagery. We tested this intriguing hypothesis in a rare sample of 151 aphantasics and 110 controls. Results show that the Stroop effect was reduced in aphantasics, albeit still existing. For the first time, the present data show that an interference between mental imagery and perception is partially responsible for the Stroop effect.

The human action repertoire houses two complementary action types: production and prevention actions. Goal-centered action control theories have traditionally emphasized production actions and neglected prevention actions. However, integrating prevention actions into these theories is crucial as they fundamentally differ in the structure of their goals: While production actions result in the presence of observable events, prevention actions result in the absence of observable events. Given this lack of overt sensory stimulation, it is intriguing to investigate how mechanistic theories can incorporate cognitive representations of prevented events. Here, we report insights from multiple experimental paradigms employing eye-tracking, mouse-tracking, keypress responses, and perceptual judges. Our results indicate that during action selection and execution, prevented events are represented similar to produced events. Yet, the representation of prevented events dissolves during pre-event monitoring and thus, is absent in post-event evaluations. This timing is highly adaptive as it is ideal to reinforce behavior and thus, our results provide an explanation of how prevention behavior may be maintained.

Auricular transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (atVNS), a non-invasive neuromodulation technique, has been demonstrated to modulate brain activity as well as cognitive and affective functions. In previous studies, we have identified aperiodic activity in EEG signals as a robust indicator of metacontrol—the ability to render information processing more persistent or flexible, depending on situational demands. However, the effects of atVNS on aperiodic neural activity remain underexplored. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the impact of atVNS on aperiodic EEG activity and analyze its potential impact on metacontrol. We collected resting-state EEG data, task-state EEG data, and behavioral outcomes from healthy participants performing a GO/NOGO task under both tVNS and sham stimulate conditions. We predicted that, under the NOGO condition, participants exhibit a significant increase in the aperiodic exponent of EEG following 20 minutes of atVNS stimulation compared to sham stimulation, whereas no such difference should be observed under the GO condition. Hence, atVNS should modulate aperiodic neural activity to enhance control performance in a cognitively demanding task. Findings were consistent with expectations. The modulation of aperiodic activity by atVNS may be associated with improvements in cognitive functions, particularly in attentional performance. This study provides novel insights into the neural mechanisms of atVNS and supports its potential applications in metacognitive enhancement and neuromodulation.

Background: The identification of early warning signs is of great importance for identifying individuals at risk for mental disorders. Especially in the case of bipolar disorder, these research endeavours are imperative considering that the frequently delayed diagnoses and longer illness duration are associated with symptom exacerbation and lower recovery rates.

Aim: We aimed to multimodally investigate associations between hypomanic personality traits and altered social affect and social cognition to probe their role as early warning signs of bipolar disorder.

Method: In a community sample (n = 140; 50.71% female), we investigated associations between hypomanic personality traits and both behavioural and neural activity measures of empathy and theory of mind (ToM) based on data from a functional magnetic

resonance imaging paradigm.

Results: Although analyses revealed no significant associations between behavioural or neural correlates of empathy and hypomanic personality traits, these traits were significantly associated with elevated ToM-related neural activity in the anterior rostral medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. These neural activation differences were not accompanied by differences in behavioural ToM performance, suggesting more intense recruitment of task-relevant brain regions but unaffected behavioural outcomes.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate hypomanic personality traits to be positively associated with ToM-related neural activity but not with behavioural ToM performance. Prospectively, our study contributes to driving towards a more comprehensive and potentially neurobiologically grounded phenotype of bipolar disorder risk that contributes to a more differential understanding of risk and resilience mechanisms.

Neurofeedback training, a method that provides real-time feedback on brain activity, has shown promise in enhancing control over one’s brain states. This study proposes a novel neurofeedback protocol based on the aperiodic 1/f parameter, derived from the Fooof algorithm, to modulate neural activity. Participants engaged in a rocket-launch game, where their brain activity, quantified by 1/f values, controls the rocket’s speed, providing feedback for self-regulation. The training protocol spanned 11 days, and changes in 1/f were calculated online. We found that participants are able to learn to modulate their 1/f parameter at will through neurofeedback. The modulation of 1/f parameter by neurofeedback may be associated with improvements in cognitive performance, a hypothesis we are testing in ongoing experiments. This research offers a novel approach to neurofeedback training, with potential implications for improving cognitive control and emotional health.

<p>Interpersonal collaboration, such as between audience members and musical performers, benefit from increased co-regulation of physiological activity i.e. synchrony. Additionally, emotional responses of audience members and their synchrony vary across different types of performances, such as variation in emotional content. However, these effects have been scarcely investigated in the context of theatrical performance let alone in an actor-director dyadic interaction. This context varies from the strictly audience-performer relationship as there is direct collaboration and impact on the final performance. We therefore hypothesized that variation in physiological synchrony between actor and director is related to actor-perceived effectiveness of the performance. We sampled actor and director heart rate, chest expansion and body acceleration across ~30 hours of performance varying in emotion and intensity. Actors (<em>n</em> = 2) rated their emotional state and performance convincingness after each recorded performance. Physiological Synchrony for heart rate, chest expansion and body acceleration were calculated using Surrogate Synchrony. T-Tests of estimated surrogate synchrony effect sizes indicated significant synchrony for almost all measures of synchrony, except non-absolute heart rate synchrony. Results from Linear Mixed Models showed that Physiological Synchrony varied significantly by the emotion performed, the level of intensity performed, and the physiological measure used. However, physiological synchrony was only rarely significantly related to the self-reported emotional state of the Actor and not at all related to the effectiveness of the performance. These findings suggest that the impact of physiological synchrony for performance might depend on the content of the performance.</p>

This study builds on theoretical considerations regarding inter-individual differences in grounded cognition and empirical evidence for an experience-specific grounding of abstract emotional words to investigate how empathic fantasy affects the semantic processing of abstract emotional words. Young, healthy participants (n = 78) with varying scores on the fantasy subscale of the Saarbrücker Persönlichkeitsfragebogen completed a lexical decision task with abstract words with an either direct (emotion-label, e.g., “joy”), indirect (emotion-laden, e.g., “friendship”) or no reference to emotion (neutral, e.g., “fact”). We conducted linear mixed effects analyses on single-trial N400 amplitudes as a measure of semantic retrieval as well as psycholinguistic ratings as a measure of emotional experience-derived representational content (preprint, material, data and analysis scripts available: https://osf.io/pe84t/). As expected, higher fantasy scores reduced N400 amplitudes more strongly for emotional (emotion-label and emotion-laden) than neutral words and crucially also for emotion-label than emotion-laden words. Further, higher fantasy scores significantly reduced N400 amplitudes over the right but not over the left hemisphere. We interpret the observed N400 reductions to reflect a reduced processing effort due to a graded, emotionality-driven facilitation in participants with a higher empathic fantasy. Higher fantasy scores further led to higher subjective ratings of absolute valence for emotion-label and emotion-laden words, which we interpret to reflect an emotional experience-derived representational enrichment. Our findings suggest that empathic fantasy differentially affects the representation and processing of emotion-label, emotion-laden, and neutral words, supporting the assumption of inter-individual differences in the experience-specific grounding of abstract concepts.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness characterized by extreme mood fluctuations, yet early detection remains challenging. Identifying biological and behavioral risk markers for BD is crucial for improving early intervention. The Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS) has been proposed as a tool for identifying individuals at increased risk for BD, as it captures traits associated with hypomania, such as elevated mood, impulsivity, and energy levels. Structural neuroimaging studies have found brain abnormalities in individuals at risk for BD; most frequently in the inferior frontal gyrus, which is involved in emotion regulation and response inhibition. A meta-analysis by Cattarinussi et al. (2022) found in addition alterations in the superior temporal gyrus, the right medium cingulate cortex, and right middle frontal gyrus. However, it remains unclear how these structural differences relate to real-world affective instability, a key feature of BD that often precedes diagnosis.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between brain structural alterations associated with hypomanic traits and affect lability in everyday life using structural MRI and ecological momentary assessment (EMA). By integrating neuroimaging with real-time assessment of affective variability, this research seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the significance of these structural abnormalities and to improve the validity of the studied risk markers. Identifying structural correlates of affect lability may enhance early risk detection and contribute to more personalized intervention strategies for BD.

P3-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow for communication via non-muscular, non-invasive electroencephalography signals, primarily the event-related potential P3. They have been applied successfully in various contexts with end-users in the locked-in state / locked-in syndrome (LIS). Yet, it is still a massive challenge to overcome the limitations of the commonly used visual stimulation for P3 elicitation. Vision-independent alternatives have been developed, e.g., with auditory or tactile stimuli. But despite promising findings with healthy participants, studies with severely paralyzed users remain scarce. We present a long-term study of a user with LIS due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to evaluate a vision-independent P3-based BCI over the course of two years at the user’s home. The user preferred tactile over auditory stimulation and a multi-class over a two-class BCI. After using four classes for 30 sessions, he preferred upgrading to six classes for 39 additional sessions. We consistently found distinct P3 patterns and BCI performances significantly above chance level, despite technical challenges and disease progression. Our findings demonstrate the persistence of the tactile P3 and the feasibility of a tactile P3-based BCI for end-users with the LIS. This merits further user-centered research in combination with technical BCI optimizations and expanded applications with end-users.

Enhancing positive emotions is important in mental health and an outcome of interest for psychotherapy. While many studies have investigated negative emotion regulation (ER) using electroencephalography, positive ER has been overlooked in the research. Here, we investigated test-retest-reliability of the late positive potential (LPP) and whether it is modulated by positive ER.

25 female students performed a positive ER experiment. They either viewed neutral or positive pictures or were asked to up-regulate their response to positive pictures. Participants were reassessed after four and eight weeks (collection ongoing; N(T1)=25, N(T2)=16, N(T3)=14). We estimated mean amplitudes for each condition in several time windows (500-2000, 2000-4000, 4000-6000 ms) over frontal and parietal electrode pools. Effects were estimated using linear mixed models and test-retest-reliability via the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC).

Our results show an effect of condition for the frontal (p = .045) and parietal (p = .098) pool in the early time window, which was driven by the contrast positive - neutral view. ICCs were moderate for the early time window at the frontal (Neutral: .566, Positive: .527, Up: .515) and parietal pooling (Neutral: .566, Positive: .567, Up: .599), but poor for later time windows (< .248).

These preliminary findings indicate a reliable response of the LPP to positive pictures but show no effects of positive ER. This is in accordance with assumptions that the LPP is mainly a correlate of arousal and that ceiling-effects may limit its responsiveness to positive ER. Analysis of the full data is necessary to substantiate these conclusions.

Compared to external tones, previous studies found reduced N1 and P2 amplitudes in event-related potentials not only for self-generated tones, referred to as sensory attenuation, but also for tones generated by a person the participant observed. The P2 in this situation was attenuated, even when accounting for temporal predictability. P2 attenuation has also been related to the sense of agency. To test whether the P2 attenuation in action observation depends on the attribution of agency to a human agent, we added conditions with robotic hands performing the tone-eliciting action. Therefore, we compared N1 and P2 amplitudes of tones generated by a self-performed action of the participant, by an observed action of another person using either their own or a robotic hand, and by the computer shown as a robotic hand, with those of conditions with visual cues predicting the tones and with unpredictable tones. Only N1 amplitudes in action observation with a human agent (human or robotic hand) were significantly attenuated compared to unpredictable external tones. The P2 was attenuated for the self-generation, action-observation and cue conditions compared to unpredictable external tones, but the P2 of self-generated tones was further attenuated compared to all other conditions. Thus, while the N1 may be affected by (observed) human agency, the P2 showed attenuation effects related to temporal predictability and self-agency. This contrasts with previous findings in action observation suggesting also other-agency effects. Future research could further examine the modulation of attenuation by the action-observation setting.

The need to make research data FAIR—findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable beyond the scope of a specific project— has led to the development of tools such as electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), particularly well known in disciplines such as chemistry. However, digital, and searchable research data and experiments in a structured and reusable form are also useful for (neuro-)psychological research. In particular, the project-based organization of data and its sharing among collaborators make ELNs attractive in this context as well. Yet, the vast number of ELNs on the market (N > 100) makes it challenging to select a suitable solution in terms of their usefulness and applicability to the discipline. As a guide, we evaluated only the ELNs listed in the ELNFinder (TU Darmstadt), as it provides comprehensive information on features such as scientific practice, licence costs, hosting/support, compliance to regulations, customisation, and more. Although seven of the ELNs listed there are discipline-specific, none of them is specifically designed for (neuro)psychological research. Moreover, most of the remaining 32 generic ELNs are fee-based, with two of eight open-source and 24 proprietary. However, the majority features customizable user interfaces (open source: 8 of 9; proprietary: 18 of 23), which, in combination with the use of own templates, makes them very useful for psychological experiments. Furthermore, three open-source and 17 proprietary tools comply with the GDPR – fundamental for (neuro-)psychology dealing mostly with sensitive data. In sum, while there are no discipline-specific ELNs for psychology, available tools can be easily adapted for the field.

An elevated feeling of power has repeatedly been shown to lead to superior goal pursuit and attainment due to increased goal-directed attention allocation. In the wake of this research, powerlessness has been assumed to impair goal-directed attention allocation or even to lead to less selective attention allocation overall. The present research proposes that this picture of the way powerlessness influences attention allocation is incomplete. It is hypothesized that instead of an overall reduction of selective attention allocation, powerlessness causes an increase in stimulus-driven allocation towards threat. Furthermore, powerlessness should lead to improved goal pursuit and attainment in a situation that requires stimulus-driven attention allocation. Three preregistered studies using behavioral and neural indicators of stimulus-driven attention allocation towards threat yielded only partial support for these hypotheses.

Study 1, using a Dot Probe Paradigm, confirmed our expectation that participants in a powerlessness condition possessed increased stimulus-driven attention allocation towards threat compared to participants in a high power condition. Study 2 used a similar dot probe task as Study 1 but additionally assessed participants’ N2pc amplitude as a neural marker of stimulus-driven attention allocation. A powerlessness condition was compared to a neutral control condition, but the finding of Study 1 could not be replicated. Study 3 tested the hypothesized improved performance of powerless individuals in a task requiring stimulus-driven attention allocation towards threat. Using a visual search paradigm, no effect of the powerlessness condition (as compared to a high power condition) was found. Implications and possible reasons for the inconclusive findings are discussed.

Psychiatric disorders are primarily diagnosed through symptom-based clinical assessments, which often lack biological specificity. Recent research suggests that Network Neuroscience approaches focusing on neural connectivity may offer a framework to deepen our understanding of brain function and mental health.

An essential component of adaptive behavior that is impaired in multiple psychiatric and neurological disorders is the ability to flexibly adapt cognitive and emotional states to changing environments. We hypothesize that the hippocampus plays a key role in this process through its interactions with brain regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex, as it encodes knowledge about the structure of the world that must be accessed flexibly in a context-appropriate manner. Dysregulation in hippocampal connectivity may thus contribute to maladaptive responses and increased vulnerability to psychopathology.

In this study, we used openly accessible resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from the Young Adult Cohort of the Human Connectome Project to investigate how hippocampal connectivity with key regions within the prefrontal cortex relates to cognitive flexibility and mental health scores by fitting linear regression coefficients. We also compare subregion-specific hippocampal connectivity, estimated by gradientography, to whole-hippocampus measures. Additionally, we assess whether resting-state functional connectivity can reliably predict cognitive flexibility in an independent dataset.

To enhance the reproducibility and robustness of our findings, we began with an exploratory analysis, followed by preregistration, and subsequently testing the robustness using a replication dataset. This research aims to deepen our understanding of hippocampal involvement in psychopathology and its potential to inform connectivity-based diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Avoidance behavior prevents confrontation with an expected threat. Excessive avoidance, however, often leads to a significant burden in anxiety disorders. Most avoidance research focuses on external threat stimuli (e.g., electric shocks). However, people also avoid internal stimuli, like unpleasant bodily symptoms. To study avoidance of internal stimuli we used inspiratory loads to provoke an interoceptive threat (i.e., the sensation of suffocation). First, participants (N = 38) learned to associate geometric figures restricted (CS+) or unrestricted (CS-) breathing. Next, participants could press a button to prevent the breathing restriction. In the following phase, this option was removed while no US was presented. Finally, the button was available again to assess extinction effects. Participants reported greater fear for CS+ but avoided both CS+ and CS- in the avoidance phases. This excessive avoidance of CS- partly contradicts previous findings using electric shocks and may hold important clinical implications.

This study is preregistered on Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/V82AQ).

Electroencephalography (EEG) can be used to develop assistive technology for impaired individuals, such as recording input signals for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). In ecological conditions, however, the standard EEG cap is considered impractical for a variety of reasons.

The cEEGrid, a flexible around-the-ear EEG system, presents a potential alternative and has already been shown to record numerous signals relevant for BCIs. However, its capability to detect steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials (SSSEPs) remains unexplored.

To further validate the cEEGrid, this study recorded SSSEPs from seven frequencies of stimulation, comparing a standard EEG cap and two cEEGrids under identical conditions.

We present results from the first six participants. Significant SSSEPs were recorded using the cap EEG for all participants, but only for one with the cEEGrid. Analysis revealed trends showing an increased but not statistically significant activity in three additional participants.

Overall, SSSEP amplitudes recorded with the cEEGrid were smaller, which is largely in line with results of other signals. This is likely because the cap EEG directly captures activity from the primary somatosensory cortex, the origin of the SSSEP. Notably though, the cEEGrid was able to approximate SSSEPs from relatively distant scalp locations by using vertical bipolar electrode combinations.

These findings suggest that the cEEGrid has the potential to facilitate EEG-based BCI applications in daily life. Due to its smaller and less intrusive design, it could be accepted more readily by potential end-users. This ongoing study will expand the participant pool to enhance statistical power and further assess hardware limitations.

Humans are fast and accurate when they recognize familiar faces. Previous electrophysiological studies have shown enhanced representations for the dichotomy of familiar vs. unfamiliar faces. Those studies used multivariate pattern analysis techniques (MVPA) to reveal that there is robust and reliable information in the EEG signal between 400 and 600 ms post stimulus onset which signals the special processing of familiar human faces. These findings were replicated with familiar non-face stimuli, such as images of scenes of participants’ own apartments. The results suggest that the familiarity effects are not face specific but rather reflect a general familiarity representation. Here we tested if the observed familiarity effect can be generalized to other, non-conspecific faces. For this reason, we measured the electrophysiological signals in dog-owners and compared them for familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar) and category (human face vs. dog face). We used MVPA to decode (1) the temporal dynamics of dog vs. human face category information and (2) those of familiarity representation for human and dog faces. We hypothesized a similar dynamic in the familiarity signal for human and dog faces which generalizes across category. Time-resolved classification showed a delayed familiarity effect for dog faces as compared to human faces. Most importantly, the familiarity effect generalized across categories from 230 ms to 980 ms after stimulus onset. These findings support the existence of a general familiarity signature in the human brain which is independent of the species and not exclusive to human faces.

Emotions are of utmost relevance for our everyday life as well as in the development and maintenance of psychological disorders. Regarding theories underlying these constructs, research mainly focusses on emotions as generalizable experiences for all humans, neglecting the inherent inter-individual differences. By developing an instrument that measures the individual affective space of a person, we endeavor to apply the personalized medicine approach to emotions and eventually transferring the results to psychiatry and psychotherapy for better diagnostics, treatments, and prevention interventions. Therefore, we compared three methods to assess individual mental representation of emotions: 1) A Multi-Arrangement Task (MAT), 2) Pairwise Comparisons (PC), and 3) Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) rating scales. Using a within-subjects design with N = 103, emotional adjectives of the Affective Norms for English words (ANEW) were arranged or rated according to the respective method on a computer monitor with subsequent calculation of a dissimilarity matrix (DSM). Analyzing these DSMs showed good test-retest reliabilities for each method while clear differences emerged in the exploratory analyses. Dimensionality analyses using multidimensional scaling showed two or three dimensions yielding an ideal solution to represent the data in the SAM with some participants using up to five dimensions in the MAT. Plotting the affective spaces into polygons revealed the highest correlation of the surface areas in the MAT, indicating that the MAT might be the better instrument when the focus is on assessing emotion differentiation. Trying to identify underlying group structures with Ward-clustering was not successful in any of the three methods.

According to the predictive coding framework, all sensory effects of actions are crucial for the predictive model engaged during action execution. Here, we investigated the relevance of incidentally generated movement sounds for a predictive movement model using the example of hurdling. During a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) session, participants watched short films of hurdling, some of which partly missed sound, visual input, or both. The participants’ task was to judge whether the hurdler maintained the same speed throughout the video. After six weeks of hurdling training participants repeated the fMRI session. We found that when the visual modality was missing, participants relied on the remaining auditory stimulus, but at the same time supplemented the missing visual input, as demonstrated by the co-activation of auditory and visual cortices. In contrast, when the auditory modality was missing, we found evidence for the exploitation of available visual information through the activation of visual cortices, but no involvement of auditory cortices. Behaviorally, participants’ performance improved after hurdling training, indicating that they had formed a more reliable predictive movement model. Interestingly, they performed worse when the auditory compared to the visual modality was missing, hinting at a higher reliance on the former. In summary, while missing visual information was supplemented by predictions, this did not seem to be the case for auditory information, as evidenced by both neural and behavioral data. Our findings reveal a potential asymmetry of the impact of different sensory modalities in predictive movement models when action sounds are incidentally generated.

The serotonin transporter gene polymorphism 5-HTTLPR – and, specifically, the short (S) allele – has previously been associated with neuroticism, stress, increased cortisol reactivity, increased amygdala activity, vulnerability to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and eating disorders. Besides, differences in physiological arousal in response to emotionally stressful tasks between 5-HTTLPR genotypes seem to depend on coping strategies, and there is preliminary evidence that carriers of the short allele tend to use less distraction and more emotion-focused coping. Accordingly, in the present study we expected to find more engagement and more emotion-focused coping in S-allele carriers compared to L-(long)-allele carriers. A sample of N = 212 women completed the Coping Strategies Inventory and provided buccal cells for genotyping as part of a larger project. There was a small effect of 5-HTTLPR on coping strategies, in that SS-carriers reported significantly stronger engagement compared to LS-, and LL-carriers, and heterozygotes reported significantly stronger engagement compared to L-allele homozygotes. More specifically, SS-carriers reported greater emotion-focused and greater problem-focused engagement than LL-carriers, and LS-carriers reported lesser emotion-focused disengagement than LL-carriers. No significant differences were seen in problem-focused disengagement. Similar results could be replicated in a second study. In line with prior evidence, findings suggest an influence of the 5-HTTLPR on coping. Future studies are needed to corroborate earlier theories of coping strategies mediating 5-HTTLPR effects on mental disorders as well as to investigate the underlying neurobiological mechanisms.

Research on interpersonal synchrony is increasing in various contexts, such as psychotherapy and parent-child interactions. However, less is known about synchrony in established psychophysiological paradigms, such as motivated attention to emotion during picture viewing.

Twenty-eight healthy individuals (71.4% female, M = 21.6 years, SD = 2.88) participated in same-gender dyads. Each pair viewed three blocks of 20 neutral, 20 pleasant, and 20 unpleasant pictures. Each picture was presented for six seconds and heart rate (HR) was recorded via mobile sensors. Self-reported data included valence and arousal ratings as well as bond ratings before and after the task. Analyses focused on HR responses, HR synchrony across emotions (via surrogate synchrony), and baseline HR variability (HRV; RMSSD, SDNN).

Replicating previous findings, HR deceleration was strongest for unpleasant pictures (orienting). No significant partner or time effects were found for picture ratings, partner evaluation, or baseline HRV differences. Higher baseline HRV correlated with increased bond ratings. Dyads showed constant in-phase HR synchrony, which did not differ across emotions. Overall HR synchrony was unrelated to bond changes, but higher synchrony during unpleasant picture viewing tended to predict more divergent bonds ratings (p = .066).

Dyadic HR synchrony remained stable across emotional contexts and did not drive bond changes. However, synchrony during unpleasant stimuli might promote interpersonal differentiation rather than cohesion. These findings highlight the complexity of physiological synchrony in emotional contexts and its nuanced role in social bonding.

Continuous substance use (SU) has been linked to disrupted integration of negative outcomes in future action planning while model-based control (MBC) over positive outcomes was only inconsistently shown to be impaired. In contrast, MBC over positive outcomes has been negatively associated with obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms, with the OC phenotype being strongly concerned with negative outcomes and enhanced avoidance. Still, the distinct role of valence-dependent MBC for SU vs. OC symptoms remains unclear. We hypothesized a double dissociation for SU and OC in the allocation of MBC for positive and negative outcomes, with increased MBC for losses vs. gains associated with increasing OC symptoms and the reverse for SU. We recruited participants online (2x n=380, 18-40 years, F/M: 50%), that completed clinical questionnaires and a 2-step task to assess MBC. Using mixed and computational modelling, we found no evidence for a double dissociation for SU and OC scores for gain and loss-based MBC. Still, for RT data, we found that speeding up of RTs was more pronounced in loss vs. reward trials for higher OC symptoms. Of note, transdiagnostically, mood-anxiety were linked to increased MBC overall, while the opposite pattern was discernable for a compulsivity dimension. It is possible that our version of RL task could not sufficiently distinguish inter-individual differences in valence-dependent MBC that might contribute to unique aspects of the investigated clinical psychopathology.

This study was in-principle accepted as peer-reviewed registered report and data and code will be openly shared upon publication via OSF.

Social attention¬—the way we focus on and respond to social cues—is often studied using eye-tracking. But for online research, we need practical, scalable alternatives. Mouse-tracking, which monitors the exploration of visual stimuli using a cursor-directed aperture, could be a promising option, but how well does it compare to eye-tracking? This study explored whether mouse-tracking provides a reliable and valid way to measure social attention. We focused on three key aspects: social prioritisation, gaze following, and emotional face perception. A total of 116 participants took part in tasks using both eye-tracking and mouse-tracking in a counterbalanced design. They viewed social images while we measured how their attention was drawn to different elements. We examined whether group effects were consistent across methods, how stable results were within individuals, and whether the two techniques produced similar patterns of attention. Mouse-tracking successfully replicated known social attention effects seen with eye-tracking. Individual reliability was moderate but robust correlations between the two methods suggest they capture similar underlying processes. We found some associations between different types of social attention, particularly between social prioritisation and gaze following, while emotional face perception appeared more distinct. Our findings suggest that mouse-tracking is a viable alternative to eye-tracking for studying social attention online. While improvements in reliability may be needed, it offers an accessible, cost-effective way to explore social cognition, with potential benefits for both research and clinical applications.

The perception of visuomotor conflicts plays an important role in self-other distinction and the so-named sense of agency. It is assumed that this is based on the comparison of actual sensory movement feedback with predictions of an internal forward model, using a copy of the motor commands. Studies manipulating visuomotor congruence predominantly use spatial or, less frequently, temporal distortions. Yet, the comparability and relative perceptual sensitivity to spatial vs temporal visuomotor manipulations is an open question.

This preregistered study tests for, and compares, detection thresholds for spatial (i.e., constant offset) vs temporal (i.e., constant delay) incongruences in visual movement feedback; and their dependence on motor signals. Participants draw ellipses covertly, while the visual movement feedback can be congruent or incongruent; i.e., with an added constant delay or a comparable amount of constant spatial offset (six levels each) to the visual movement. The task is to indicate, as quickly as possible, whether the seen movement is congruent, delayed, or offset. Control analyses will test for principled comparability of the actual executed movements across conditions.

Furthermore, we test whether discrimination between different kinds of visual movement feedback, and sensitivity to different amounts of incongruence indeed depends on visuomotor comparisons, rather than purely visual processing. That is, we test whether the detection and discrimination of incongruence is better when these movements are (incongruent) consequences of one's actions, compared with passively observation of the same visual movements (separate play-back session).

Data collection for the study is ongoing and expected to be completed in April.

3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA, “Ecstasy”) and methamphetamine (METH, “Crystal Meth”) are widely used and known to negatively affect executive functioning in chronic users. Our study investigated whether the known neurobiochemical commonalities and differences of these two substances translate into different impulse control deficits in chronic consumers. We investigated n=27 abstinent chronic METH users, n=30 abstinent chronic MDMA users, and n=75 separately matched healthy controls with a time-varying uncertainty (TVU) task, while recording EEG. We used computational modelling techniques based on Bayesian learning theories to characterise behavioural premature responding impulsivity (PRI) and quantified the feedback-related negativity (FRN). We found that only METH users had higher trait levels of trait PRI (i.e., a greater tendency towards urgency in decision-making) and a reduced FRN amplitude. We further found that while there was a significant correlation of smaller FRN amplitudes with increasing trait PRI across the entire sample, this nexus was absent in the METH user group. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that abstinent chronic METH (but not MDMA) users display heightened impulsivity, which appears to be rooted in altered feedback processing / impaired learning from both positive and negative action outcomes, which is most likely a consequences of reduced dopaminergic signalling.

Olfactory cues play a crucial role in social communication and interaction. Yet, it remains elusive how the subconscious perception of a romantic partner’s body odor might influence psychobiological stress experiences. Given that social support from an (actually present) romantic partner is known to attenuate psychobiological stress responses, we expected similar stress-buffering effects for subconsciously presented partner odors. To test our hypothesis, 178 participants (after exclusions) from 109 romantic heterosexual couples underwent either the Trier Social Stress Test or a non-stressful control condition. During both the anticipation and stress task itself, participants were exposed to either their partner’s body odor (collected under standardized conditions over five consecutive nights) or a neutral, non-social control odor via an olfactometer. Data were analyzed using linear mixed effects models and piecewise linear regressions. Unexpectedly, the partner’s odor increased subjective stress and heart rates, while leaving the cortisol release unaffected. Exploratory analyses also revealed stronger cardiovascular partner odor effects among participants who rated their partner’s body odor as sexy and lovable. Potential underlying mechanisms include the causal misattribution of odor-induced sexual arousal to the stressful experimental situation, or an evolutionary adaptive mechanism that amplifies stress responses when a loved one is involved in a threatening situation. Taken together, our findings deepen existing knowledge regarding olfactory effects on stress responsiveness, and highlight the complex role of chemosensory signaling in social communication.

Complementing research on nucleus accumbens, our coordinate-based meta-analysis investigates limbic putamen (LP) functionalities. Among “limbic” domains, episodic memory has been dissociated from reward processing. However, the localization of memory recruitment within the LP, especially along its y dimension, is unclear. We localize LP activations at episodic retrieval relative to the anterior commissure, to randomly spread activations, and to reward activations.

Articles reporting LP activations in healthy adults were collected and filtered for episodic memory retrieval and reward receipt. Per spatial dimension, the sample size-weighted mean coordinate of memory activations was tested against random samples, the reward sample, and (y dimension only) the anterior commissure. Classification served to countercheck memory-reward dissociation. Lateralization was explored.

Fifteen memory activations (259 subjects; 13 samples) and 17 reward activations (382 subjects; 17 samples) were analyzed. Most memory activations clustered in the medial anterior LP, three posteriorly, and reward activations (mid-to-)anteriorly. Memory mean y did not significantly differ from the anterior commissure or random samples but was posterior to random samples of comparable x and z location, and tendentially posterior to reward mean y. No significant x or z effects were found. Classification failed. Memory was left-lateralized relative to chance and reward.

While not segregated from reward, anterior memory activations corroborate the cognitive role of anterior putamen. Further research is necessary regarding the posterior locus and its possible medial temporal lobe relations. The current findings will be complemented by activation likelihood estimation analyses on a larger dataset. Reliable localization could help predict impairments following focal lesions.

Human intelligence varies across individuals, and structural brain networks have been shown to predict this variation. However, the predictive performance can depend heavily on the strengths and weaknesses of different machine learning-based modeling approaches.

In this preregistered study, we systematically compare and discuss different machine learning-based predictive modelling approaches to forecast individual intelligence scores from structural brain connectivity. Our analysis spans whole-brain connectivity as well as connections within and between specific subnetworks. To this aim, we use open-access data from 1,049 participants of the Human Connectome Project and derived structural connectivity from diffusion-weighted imaging. Intelligence is estimated as latent g-factor from 12 cognitive tasks.

We start by evaluating the most popular approach, Connectome-based Predictive Modeling (CPM), and compare it to Covariation Maximizing Eigenvector- based Prediction (CMEP), while both approaches were originally designed to predict intelligence from functional brain connectivity. Building on recent trends in neuroscience, we further assess graph neural networks (GNN), which inherently account for graph structure in neural data.

Our findings highlight the critical role of network size in prediction performance. Further, subnetwork selection evolved as crucial impact factor with some subnetworks consistently showing higher predictive performance regardless of the method used, reinforcing the robustness of previous findings. Overall, our study offers strategies to enhance the robustness and generalizability of research on the neural correlates of human intelligence by integrating the graph structure of neural data into predictive frameworks.

The transmission of social signals via olfactory cues (i.e. chemosensory signaling) contributes crucially to social communication across numerous species. Yet there is surprisingly little known about the impact of chemosensory signaling on social behavior in humans. Recent findings indicate that human body odors convey diverse socially relevant information, such as emotional states. However, the precise socio-affective processes mediating the potential effects of human chemosignals on social behavior remain elusive. We examined the impact of human body odors on emotion recognition from facial expressions, a crucial aspect of effective social communication. A sample of 37 healthy male participants performed an emotion recognition task while being exposed to three different chemosensory conditions in a within subjects design: stress odor (sampled from an independent male sample during the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups, TSST-G), social odor (sampled during the control condition of the TSST-G) and a neutral odor (damped cotton pad without human body odor). Face stimuli varied in emotional valence (anger, happy, neutral) and intensity (low, high), and participants indicated via button press if they had perceived an emotional state in each presented face. Preliminary results suggest that exposure to social odors improved overall emotion recognition. Additionally, participants’ anxiety seems to affect the effect of body odors on emotion recognition. Together, these findings shed light on the role of chemosensory signaling on human social cognition and behavior and may inspire researchers to explore the effect of chemosensory communication in clinical conditions associated with altered social interaction and emotional processing.

Background: The loss of a spouse often leads to both mental and physical health problems. One possible factor behind these changes could be alterations in DNA methylation (DNAm). Methods: The study involved 1865 older participants. Epigenome-wide levels of DNAm were assessed using whole blood samples. We investigated whether relationship status could explain differences in DNAm, comparing married individuals to those who had experienced social loss (through widowhood or divorce). We also examined how social factors—such as the number of close social relationships and household size—and depression-related genetic risk (PRS-MDD) might moderate these differences. Predicted changes in DNAm (delta-beta values) were calculated. Regression models were used to test the hypotheses. Results: On an epigenome-wide level, meaningful differences between groups only emerged when the moderators were factored in, indicating a variety of differentially methylated positions (DMPs). Further, the delta-beta values varied notably as a function of the levels of these moderators. Conclusion: Changes in DNAm may play a key role in explaining health-related effects the loss of a spouse can have, especially given that many of the DMPs identified in this study were linked to health outcomes in previous studies. Of note, these effects appeared to be highly dependent on specific moderators (see above), especially those indicative of social integration. These findings offer insights into the molecular biological effects the loss of important social relationships can have. They also might help to understand why not everybody is affected equally, potentially paving the way for the development of personalized interventions.

Gaze behavior is a crucial component of nonverbal communication in social interactions. While eye-tracking offers precise measurements in laboratory settings, it is costly, requires specialized expertise, and is not always feasible. To address these limitations, we developed a straightforward and objective video-based method to quantify face gaze using OpenFace, an open-source facial analysis tool. To validate the method, we analyzed face gaze in digital dyadic interactions between previously unacquainted participants (N = 60). Our findings reveal three key insights: First, the novel measure of face gaze showed high stability across three interaction sets. Second, it was associated with external ratings of gaze behavior by the interaction partner and self-reported feelings of interpersonal closeness. Third, face gaze synchronizes between interaction partners, as reflected by a positive association between their gaze behaviors. In summary, these findings highlight the importance of facial gaze in social interaction and suggest that inferring facial gaze from video data provides an accessible alternative for researchers to study interactive gaze dynamics in social interaction with little effort, particularly in settings where eye-tracking is unavailable or impractical.

Spatial navigation is crucial for survival, particularly the ability to retrace routes and avoid danger. We investigated how anticipatory anxiety influences navigation in a virtual urban environment across two studies. Healthy participants with varying trait anxiety completed route-repetition and route-retracing tasks under safe and threatening conditions. Study 1 (N = 48) examined behavioral performance using a screen-based virtual reality (VR) task with the threat of electric shocks in either day- or night-sky environments. Results revealed an interaction between anxiety and instructed threat: while low-anxious individuals showed impaired route-retracing under threat, high-anxious individuals exhibited enhanced performance. This aligns with attentional control theory, suggesting that high-anxious individuals shift attention toward information relevant for escape strategies (e.g., running away). Study 2 (N = 30) aimed to replicate these behavioral findings within an immersive virtual environment. To this end, we used a Meta Quest 3 VR-headset and recorded electrocortical activity while the tasks were performed. Preliminary results confirmed that high-anxious individuals navigated more efficiently under threat, reflected in faster decision times without accuracy trade-off. No differences emerged between route-retracing and route-repetition. On a broader perspective, our findings highlight an often overlooked benefit of anxiety: its role in enhancing environmental information processing for adaptive coping strategies, ultimately preparing individuals for effective flight responses.

In the neuroscience of consciousness, the predominant recurrent processing theory (RPT) and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT) have linked different candidates in event-related potentials (ERPs) to perceptual awareness: enhanced early occipito-temporal negativities and late centro-parietal positivities, respectively. A popular paradigm to investigate them is the attentional blink (AB), which describes the phenomenon that reporting the second of two targets (T1 and T2) is impaired when presented in rapid succession. In decades of EEG research, numerous studies have linked awareness of T2 to both of the above-mentioned ERPs. However, these studies have systematically confounded awareness with task-related post-perceptual processes, such as decision-making and motor preparation. Thus, the present study with 116 participants aimed at disentangling neural correlates of awareness, relevance, and decision-making in the AB. Participants were presented with rapid streams of letter strings (T1) and words (T2 and distractors) and randomly assigned to one of three groups: 1) In the unmarked condition, participants could not distinguish T2 from distractors. 2) In the marked condition, T2 was highlighted as the relevant stimulus. 3) In the decision condition, participants additionally performed a T2 discrimination task. Comparing ERPs in response to seen versus unseen T2 stimuli demonstrated that early negativities are reliably enhanced by awareness across task conditions, whereas late positivities depend on decision-making. These findings challenge the conclusions of numerous previous electrophysiological studies, suggest that the processes underlying enhanced late positivities are not necessary for awareness, and contradict a key prediction of GNWT.

More than a decade of research has suggested that stress does not promote ("tend-and-befriend") or inhibit ("fight-or-flight") prosocial behavior on its own. Here, we investigated whether the effects of stress on behavior depend on the interaction partner’s social role. Specifically, 121 individuals performed the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups before dividing resources among themselves and with either another participant (i.e., a peer) or a TSST-G jury member (i.e., the stressor). We found that participants behaved less prosocially toward the stressor compared to a peer across various behavioral measures (i.e. trust, trustworthiness, sharing, punishment). Overall, our results suggest that individuals adapt their behavior toward others depending on the social role of their interaction partner, behaving more prosocially toward potential allies than toward aggressors. More broadly, our study highlights the importance of considering situational variables when examining the effect of stress on prosocial behavior.

While the neural correlates of emotional processing are well documented, the field of personality neuroscience, i.e., examining the neural basis of personality, has only gained traction recently. Accordingly, how personality traits interrelate with neural correlates involved in emotion processing, particularly in response to social-emotional stimuli, is less well understood. In the present study, we investigated these interrelations in a large EEG study (N = 100) consisting of two phases. In the first phase, participants completed, among others, an online questionnaire assessing personality dimensions from the Dark Tetrad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Sadism). In the second phase, EEG was recorded while participants performed an emotion categorization task. Facial expressions varied in emotion (happy, angry, fearful, and neutral), intensity (60% versus 100%), and dynamic versus static presentation. Event-related potential (ERP) components such as N170, EPN, and LPC revealed robust emotion effects across the early and late stages of processing. Bayes Model comparisons were applied to explore the influence of dark personality traits on emotion-related neural responses, with covariates of age, gender, reaction time, and global field power. Dark Tetrad traits showed pronounced and specific associations with the neural processing of emotional facial expressions, especially in early components. These findings suggest that dark personality dimensions are tightly linked to variations in emotion processing. The results are discussed within the framework of current neural models of personality and emotion.

Decision-making in daily life often involves evaluating trade-offs between potential rewards and the mental effort required to obtain them. Although neuroimaging studies have demonstrated striatal activation during effort-based decision-making, causal evidence for the role of the striatum in human effort-based choice is lacking. In the current study, we employed transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS), a novel non-invasive stimulation technique capable of targeting deeper brain regions, to examine the causal involvement of the striatum in mental effort-based decisions.

33 healthy participants (22 female; mean age = 25.45 years) performed an effort-based decision-making task under both active theta-frequency (6 Hz) tTIS and sham conditions while undergoing functional MRI. Two pairs of electrodes were placed over F3-F4 and TP7-TP8 sites according to the 10-20 EEG system. The task required participants to choose between two options varying in reward magnitude and cognitive effort (0- to 4-back tasks), with individualized calibration based on subjective effort valuations.

On the behavioral level, striatum-targeted theta tTIS increased sensitivity to both reward magnitudes and effort costs. At the neural level, this was reflected in stronger representations of effort demands within the striatum and stimulation-induced alterations in the functional coupling between the striatum and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region known for cost-benefit integration.

These findings provide causal evidence for the involvement of the striatum in modulating decisions to engage in mentally effortful tasks. Moreover, they demonstrate that tTIS is a promising tool for selectively influencing deep brain regions, offering potential applications in clinical populations with reward system dysfunctions.

Emotion-Induced Blindness (EIB) describes the reduced ability to recall targets presented after emotionally arousing stimuli. Differences in emotional processing and EIB have been established, including in individuals high in psychopathy, who show lower responsiveness to emotional stimulation. This study investigates how Psychopathic personality traits modulate the experience of EIB along with changes in performance in EIB tasks across repeated assessments. Event-related potentials will also be examined in relation to EIB.

This study (n = 90) uses rapid serial visual presentation to explore EIB at three timepoints across two sessions (Session one: T1, T2. Session two: T3 - approximately one week later). Participants were asked to identify target images which were shown at varying lags (2, 4, 8) after distractor images (negative, neutral, baseline). Psychopathic personality traits were assessed using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) and the Self-Reported Psychopathy scale (SRP).

Individuals who scored highly on Fearless-Dominance (PPI factor) were more accurate in identifying target images when it proceeded a negative distractor at lag 2, thus experiencing less Emotion-Induced Blindness. This effect was not seen for Self-Centered Impulsivity or Cold-heartedness. We aim to determine how other facets of psychopathy (SRP factors) interact with EIB. We also aim to examine neurophysiological correlates of behavioural differences in two event-related potentials (N2 and P3) in relation to target and distractor images.

The results of this research will add to a growing understanding of the emotional and attentional factors of psychopathy.

Background: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) often starts in adolescence and is one of the most common pediatric psychiatric disorders. For several psychiatric disorders, a biopsychological mechanism seems to be deviations in the autonomic regulation measured by heart rate variability (HRV). Yet, few studies have examined these cardiac measures in OCD, especially scarce is data on pediatric samples. We investigated HRV in adolescents with OCD compared to typically developing controls (TD) and assessed associations with symptom severity and difficulties in emotion regulation (ER).

Methods: A five minute resting state ECG was recorded and HRV was analysed using the mean HR, the RMSSD and HF. The final sample comprised 122 age and IQ-matched adolescents (OCD: n=69; TD: n=53) from 10 to 19 years.

Results: Adolescents with OCD had a lower lnRMSSD and a higher HR compared to TD. We found an association between obsessive-compulsive symptoms, especially obsessive thoughts, with cardiac markers. Additionally, adolescents with OCD had more difficulties in ER and a decrease in lnRMSSD was associated with ER, especially with lower self–reported emotional understanding and body awareness.

Conclusion: Findings of lower resting HRV are in line with decreased HRV in other psychiatric disorders and adult OCD samples and suggest an imbalance in the ANS function with a lower parasympathetic nervous system activity. Alterations in HRV seem to characterize the pathophysiology of OCD. These data may potentially support therapeutic and diagnostic approaches.

Failures to recover from or habituate to acute stressors in everyday life favor chronic stress states threatening physical and mental health via prolonged exposure to stress hormones such as cortisol. The ability to cognitively regulate emotions has emerged as one potential moderator of physiological stress responsivity which in turn might explain individual differences in the vulnerability to stress-related (psycho-)pathology. Previous research provides first hints for rumination to impede stress recovery and habituation, while reappraisal tendencies have been associated with the opposing outcome. Critically, these two strategies need to be compared in an experimental study design to draw causal conclusions on their impact on stress coping. Moreover, possible sex differences in how cognitive emotion regulation influence stress responses are still poorly understood. To address these gaps, 90 healthy participants (45 women & 45 men) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test on two consecutive days. Participants were randomly assigned (balanced by sex) to one of three regulation conditions (reappraisal, rumination, control) following the first stress exposure. Salivary cortisol and heart rate measures were collected to quantify endocrine and autonomic nervous system activity, respectively. Psychological stress was assessed via self-report questionnaires. Based on previous findings, we expect reappraisal to strengthen and rumination to impair stress recovery and habituation particularly with respect to cortisol. The results will provide new insights in how reappraisal and rumination may shape hormonal stress profiles and allow for clinically relevant implications in the prevention and treatment of stress-related disorders.

Stress changes social behavior, yet its effects remain contradictory. Traditionally, stress was thought to trigger an antagonistic fight-or-flight response aimed at eliminating the stressor, but recent studies have revealed the opposite response, tend-and-befriend, where individuals altruistically invest into their social network in exchange for support and mutual protection. Here, we hypothesize that stress does not promote one response over the other; instead, it stimulates both behaviors, dissociable on the neuropharmacological level and moderated by the social context. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind psychopharmacological study, we administered hydrocortisone and yohimbine—alone or in combination—to manipulate the actions of the main stress hormone cortisol and the catecholaminergic arousal transmitter noradrenaline. Subsequently, participants made decisions in an intergroup conflict task, choosing either to maximize their own monetary payoff, to altruistically maximize the payoff of their in-group members, or to increase the payoff of the in-group while simultaneously decreasing the payoff of the respective out-group. Consistent with our hypotheses, glucocorticoid activation increased generosity towards the in-group, whereas noradrenergic activation increased parochial altruism, i.e., altruistic in-group support combined with hostility towards the out-group. These findings challenge the dichotomy between fight-or-flight and tend-and-befriend responses, suggesting that the behavior associated with the neurohormonal stress response is neither static, nor one-directional, but depends on the relative dominance of cortisol versus noradrenaline action as well as the prevailing intergroup dynamics. We highlight the broader societal implications of our findings, providing a potential biological mechanism underlying the self-perpetuating cycle of intergroup conflict.

Several cognitive systems in the human brain such as language and face processing are organized asymmetrically. One of the primary neuroscientific methods to assess such functional hemispheric asymmetries is electroencephalography (EEG). The two major forms of analyzing asymmetries in the EEG signal are analyzing asymmetries in specific event-related potentials (ERP), such as the N1, and analyzing asymmetries in event-related or resting state EEG oscillations such as in the alpha band. However, the relationships between these two forms of EEG asymmetries are not well understood. Therefore, it was the aim of the present study was to replicate previous results on ERP and alpha band asymmetries and assess whether they show a negative correlation with each other as could be expected from the hypothesis that alpha represents an absence of cognition. To this end we tested n=100 participants with EEG resting state, as well as task-based EEG with words, faces, emotional faces and houses as stimuli. Replication of previous EEG asymmetry findings showed mixed results. Interestingly, we found strong positive associations between individual ERP and alpha band asymmetries. This finding highlights the need to re-assess the functional role of alpha asymmetries and suggests that they do not only reflect the absence of cognition as widely assumed but reflect active neuronal processing asymmetries such as in phase reorganization and the timing of neural activity.

Metacognition research has explored domains such as perception, memory, and value-based decision-making. However, less is known about metacognition in social decision-making. This is especially interesting in the context of the domain specificity vs. generality debate surrounding metacognition: it has been suggested that different neural networks may underlie metacognition in different domains, but so far few studies directly compared the neural correlates of metacognition in different domains. To close these gaps, the present study investigated the neural correlates of social metacognition and examines whether they differ from the well-established neural mechanisms of perceptual metacognition.

To this end, participants performed a social and a perceptual metacognition task inside the fMRI scanner. Both tasks required a task-dependent decision and subsequent confidence rating about the accuracy of the decision.

On the behavioural level, we found that both metacognitive bias and metacognitive efficiency differ significantly and are not correlated between the metacognition tasks. For both tasks, the fMRI analyses revealed neural correlates for confidence in the FPC but task-specific connectivity patterns of the FPC with other brain regions.

This research sheds light on the neural substrates of social metacognition and contributes to the ongoing debate on whether metacognition operates as a domain-general or domain-specific process.

One of the longest lasting debates in the discipline of neurocognitive psychology until today’s time concerns the degree of functional specialization within the human brain. A thoroughly investigated anatomo-functional brain organization within complex cognition is the Multiple-demand (MD) system, proposing a strong interconnected functional brain network that exhibits co-activation of widely distributed domain-general brain areas within fronto-temporo-parietal regions. Utilizing (f-)MRI protocols of the Human Connectome Project and illustrated on the MD system, we exploratively outlined the anatomo-functional brain organization in a wide spectrum of cognition. We assessed five different cognitive constructs (memory, language, salience, visuospatial, social cognition) by administering related task paradigms and contrasting two manipulated task conditions. Based on N = 50 participants, we precisely delineated commonalities and differences of distributed whole-brain activation at a vertex- and parcel level. Commonalities across cognition reflected domain-general brain region activation within subregions of the frontal- and parietal lobe and were largely captured by MD regions. Differences across cognition were objectifiable by consistent co-activation of the MD network and a canonical resting-state network for the respective cognitive pro- cess, consequently resulting in domain-specific brain activation. The complex dynamic of domain-general and domain-specific brain activation resulting from co-activation of multiple functional networks ultimately enables distinct cognitive functioning. Such progressive methods in (functional-)neuroimaging, combined with the thorough investigation of consistent intra- and inter-individual task-positive networks like the MD system, enable for stronger inferences on anatomo-functional brain organizations as compared to historical findings and hold promise for potential translations into clinical settings.

Auditory working memory (AWM) is critical for the temporary maintenance of sensory information, particularly in real-world communication contexts. Despite extensive research on visual working memory, the encoding of auditory features in working memory and their neural representation have remained less explored. As previous work has suggested that sounds are stored in working memory as objects including both task-relevant and -irrelevant features, we investigated whether we can decode both types of features from magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals. We conducted an experiment using a delayed match-to-sample task. Stimuli were spoken syllables that differed both in perceived spatial location and voice identity (i.e., specific combinations of timbre and pitch). Participants were instructed to memorize voice identity (the relevant feature), while location (the irrelevant feature) could be ignored. The task required a match non-match decision about a probe sound whose irrelevant feature value could either be identical to or differ from the memorized stimulus. Behavioral results demonstrated that voice identity matches were detected more accurately and faster when the irrelevant location matched the probe as well, whereas for voice identity non-match trials, there was no effect of the irrelevant feature. Multi-variate pattern analyses revealed that both task-relevant and -irrelevant features were decodable during the encoding phase. While the task-relevant voice identity yielded higher classification performance compared to location, location information was decodable earlier than voice identity. In conclusion, both our behavioral and MEG data suggest that location information is encoded alongside voice identity, and task relevance modulates the decodability of auditory features.

Cognitive training has been shown to improve cognitive performance in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). These improvements are associated with changes in functional brain connectivity. Using psychometric network analysis to assess changes in the network structure of cognitive functioning following cognitive trainings has the potential to gain new insights into cognitive training mechanisms. Following preregistered research questions, hypotheses, and full analysis plan, we estimated gaussian graphical models from 14 subtasks of the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery screening module using data of 285 individuals with MCI (age: 57.72±13.96 years, 69.82% female) from a randomized-controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of a 12-week cognitive training intervention. To identify changes in network connectivity, we conducted pairwise-comparisons between the control group (CG, n=100) and the cognitive training group (TG, n=185) between baseline and post-test descriptively and using Network Comparison Tests (NCT). Furthermore, we performed Network Intervention Analysis (NIA), including group membership as node in a network together with subtask change scores from baseline to post-test. Both CG and TG descriptively showed increased connectivity between time-points, with the increase being more pronounced in the TG. However, NCT found no significant differences in any pairwise comparisons. NIA revealed no direct or indirect intervention effects on any subtask. Our findings contrast with reports of increased functional brain connectivity following cognitive training in comparable studies, raising questions about conceptual differences between brain and cognitive network connectivity. Descriptive connectivity increases could hint towards beginning changes in cognitive connectivity that happen on a larger timeframe, possibly reflecting changes in cognitive reserve.

Social factors are important modulators of pain. Not only direct social influences such as social support, but also indirect ones such as information about the pain perception of others can shape an individual’s pain perception. However, it is unclear whether social information about a particular pain modality extends to other modalities.

In this study, we investigated the impact of social information on one pain modality and possible generalization effects. Healthy participants underwent three experimental phases (within-condition): baseline phase (heat pain stimulation), social manipulation phase (heat pain stimulation and social information), generalization phase (cold pain stimulation). Social information served as between-subjects factor: In one group, participants were shown pain ratings from supposed other participants that were higher than their own rating. In another group, participants were shown pain ratings from others that were lower than their own pain rating. Self-reported ratings of pain expectation and actual pain were assessed regarding intensity and unpleasantness. Moreover, autonomic responses were recorded.

Preliminary data (n = 45) revealed that expected and actual pain unpleasantness ratings were significantly shifted towards social information, which was also extended to cold pain stimuli in the generalisation phase. Descriptively, this pattern could also be observed for pain intensity. We could not find a modulation of skin conductance through social information.

This demonstrates evidence of pain-modulating effects of social information. The fact that social influences can be transferred to another pain modality shows the scope of the effect and emphasises the relevance for clinical implications.

Many mental activities require sustained effort for goal achievement, and loss of motivation to exert such effort poses significant individual and societal challenges. Previous studies have shown a correlation between cognitive fatigue and increased glutamate (Glu) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), but evidence for a causal relationship is lacking. To fill this gap, we combined transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the left DLPFC and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) in a within-subject design. Thirty-one participants underwent two sessions. In each, they performed an effort-based decision task during MRS scanning with anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC (pre-test), followed by either active (anodal) or sham tDCS during a 20-min 3-back memory task to induce cognitive fatigue. Participants then repeated the decision task and MRS under anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC (post-test). Our results revealed that active tDCS during the 3-back memory task significantly improved performance (higher sensitivity d-prime, faster reaction times), suggesting enhanced engagement in mental effort. In addition, participants decided less often for high reward-high effort option after higher effort exertion under active compared with sham stimulation. MRS results revealed a greater increase in Glu levels in the left DLPFC after higher effort exertion under anodal compared with sham tDCS, indicating elevated metabolic changes resulting from sustained effort. These findings provide insights into the metabolic changes underlying motivational fatigue after mental effort.

We present an EEG experiment investigating neural oscillations in a virtual reality-based, continuous (periodic) hand-target phase-matching task with varying visual feedback delay. Participants had to align the phasic size changes of a target dot with the movements of a virtual hand, which they controlled via a data glove on their unseen real hand. We introduced visuomotor conflict by adding delays to the virtual hand movements, which required participants to adapt their movements. We systematically varied the target i.e. grasping frequency (0.3 Hz vs. 0.5 Hz for a full close-and-open cycle) and the visual feedback delay (15% vs. 25% of the target frequency).

Replicating our previous findings, we found strong induced low-frequency neural oscillations, specifically at twice the target’s oscillatory frequency, potentially suggesting neural entrainment. Moreover, a repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that delay length significantly modulated both the power of the task-induced (“entrained”) oscillations (over sensors CPz, CP1, CP2); and power in theta (AFz, Fz, FCz), alpha (CPz), and beta (C3) frequency bands.

These findings provide further evidence that neural oscillatory dynamics are sensitive to visuomotor conflicts, highlighting the role of low-frequency entrainment and spectral power changes in sensorimotor control.

Background: Frontal midline theta (FMT) oscillations are linked to cognitive control and feedback processing. A recent meta-analysis showed that neurofeedback (NF) has successfully been used to upregulate FMT but identified a lack of evidence of FMT downregulation. These findings were explained by the FMT-Inhibition Dilemma (FMT-ID). The suggested dilemma implies that the processes required for NF—such as exerting cognitive control and interpreting feedback—naturally increase FMT activity, making its targeted suppression difficult.

Methods: We here examined the effects of NF on FMT modulation using two independent datasets. One dataset involved an NF protocol specifically designed to suppress FMT, while the other focused on parietal alpha downregulation but allowed for secondary analysis of FMT activity. We hypothesized that any kind of NF training would lead to increased FMT due to the demands inherent to the task.

Results: Findings confirmed that FMT activity increased during NF across both datasets, even when inhibition was the explicit goal. Transfer trials, in which participants attempted self-regulation without feedback, produced inconsistent outcomes across datasets.

Relevance: These results provide first empirical support for the FMT-ID, demonstrating that NF strategies aimed at reducing FMT may be inherently constrained by the mechanisms driving NF learning itself. This study underscores the need for further research to refine NF protocols and better understand the cognitive and neural dynamics underlying FMT modulation.

Experiencing acute pain is inherently unpleasant, whereas relief from an aversive state (e.g., ongoing pain) has reward-like qualities. Understanding the intertwined neural underpinnings of pain and relief suggests clinical implications, particularly in chronic pain. This study aimed to disentangle their neural representations by leveraging existing brain-based pain signatures and developing a novel signature capturing both pain and relief.

61 healthy individuals underwent an fMRI capsaicin-induced heat pain paradigm where a tonic mild pain (pain medium) was continuously induced, along with pain increase and decrease by applying heat and cold stimulations. With the individual 1st-level beta-maps for each condition (medium, increase, decrease), we trained a Ridge regression model to predict individual-wise mean pain intensity ratings across trials, using a nested leave-one-participant-out cross-validation scheme. To investigate the underlying neurobiological systems, we quantified the differential contributions of various brain areas to predicting pain increase and relief with condition-specific Haufe-weights.

Our model - unlike other pain signatures - accurately predicted both pain increase and relief, explaining 51.6% of variance in within-individual pain ratings. Furthermore, it differentiated increase and relief from medium with 88.52% and 75.41% accuracy, respectively (permutation tests ps < .0001). Pain increase was primarily predicted by nociceptive regions (e.g., S2, insula, thalamus, dACC), while pain relief was predominantly encoded in frontostriatal circuits. Shared patterns mostly included salience-related areas. Our results show that neural representation of pain relief is more complex than a mere decrease in nociceptive activity, and our signature holds promise for understanding pain relief mechanisms in clinical contexts.

Introduction: Individuals with problematic alcohol use experience heightened acute craving following stress in-duction and it is well recognized that stress and alcohol use are intrinsically linked. Yet, the associa-tion between stress responses in the brain and alcohol use remains poorly understood. Neuroim-aging studies have demonstrated that lower ACC activation during stress is linked to increased craving and substance-oriented behavior, suggesting a role for emotion regulation processes in this connection.

Methods: To delve deeper into this relationship, we employ real-time fMRI neurofeedback (NF) in a “mecha-nistic probe” study to modulate neural stress responses in 102 participants with problematic alco-hol consumption after psychosocial stress induction with an in-scanner stress paradigm. We apply a randomized Yoke-controlled design, in which the experimental group aims to downregulate their stress response through upregulation of the perigenual ACC (pACC). The control group receives feedback from individually assigned participants of the experimental group to account for non-specific effects of the NF set-up and stimuli. Following the MRI, participants record daily stress, craving, and drinking behavior by means of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) over a 6-week follow-up period. Hypotheses: We anticipate better pACC regulation and reduced craving during neurofeed-back in the experimental group, with higher pACC activity associated with decreased subsequent craving and alcohol consumption. Additionally, we explore functional network connectivity during stress induction and neurofeedback to gain a more holistic understanding of the stress-alcohol relationship. Exploratory Results: The poster presents the design, plan and current state of the project including prelim-inary data analyses.

Several studies show that excessive alcohol consumption is associated with neuroadaptations, such as in-creased sensitivity to stress and stress-induced craving, but the exact relationships between stress responses and alcohol use are still not fully understood.

In this project, we therefore aim to investigate the complex relationship between individual stress responses and alcohol consumption by inducing psychosocial stress in 102 participants with problematic alcohol use while undergoing fMRI scanning. In the ScanSTRESS paradigm, participants will perform mental rotation and arithmetic tasks under time pressure while receiving negative social feedback from two experimenters. Con-trol conditions involve completing less demanding versions of the same tasks without time pressure. We will assess subjective stress levels, alcohol craving, and cortisol levels before and after stress induction as a phys-iological stress marker. During a six-week follow-up period daily stress, craving, and real-life drinking behavior will be assessed using an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach. In a subsequent part of the study that will be presented separately, participants will receive real-time neurofeedback with the aim of upregulating their subgenual ACC in order to downregulate stress responses.

With this part of the project, we aim to gain insight into how individual neural stress responses are associat-ed with problematic alcohol use. Specifically, we expect activation in the thalamus and striatum to show positive associations with craving and real-life drinking behavior, whereas activation in the ACC and vmPFC show negative associations. The poster provides an overview of the experimental design and project plan, including preliminary data.

Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR) uses cues during sleep to modify memories, but its effect on weakening fear memory generalization remains unclear. This study investigates whether TMR during slow-wave sleep (SWS) reduces fear generalization by selectively enhancing memory specificity. Sixty participants will be randomly assigned to a nap group (90-minute SWS) or a wake group (quiet rest). Fear conditioning pairs two geometric shapes (circles and triangles) with distinct odors (leather or metal), fully counterbalanced across participants. Within each set, the most extreme shapes serve as CS+ (partially reinforced with shocks) and CS− (never reinforced). Critically, in the nap group using TMR, one odor is re-presented during SWS (i.e., the target), while the other remains unreactivated (i.e., the nontarget). Sleep- EEG and fMRI will be used to monitor SWS and evaluate activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, and vmPFC, respectively. We hypothesize that TMR during SWS will selectively reduce generalization only for reactivated stimuli), evidenced by diminished fear responses to non-reinforced, intermediate sizeds shapes, alongside reduced amygdala activation and enhanced vmPFC-hippocampal connectivity for target-related memories. In contrast, nontarget-associated fear of unreactivated stimuli will show comparable generalization in both groups. By disentangling sleep-dependent memory precision from wakeful extinction, this design clarifies how TMR during SWS weakens fear overgeneralization through targeted neural replay, offering a novel strategy to mitigate relapse in disorders where maladaptive generalization persists, such as addiction or PTSD.

For millennia, people have been interested in detecting lies and understanding their neurocognitive underpinnings. As a novel approach to this mission, the present preregistered EEG study investigates mental processes of preparing a lie, continuing Schnuerch et al. (2024, Psychophysiology) in a more realistic scenario. While participants previously categorized written words denoting furniture and clothing correctly or incorrectly, based on preceding truthful and untruthful color-cues, the current task required answering autobiographical, highly relevant, questions from four semantic categories. Thirty-two participants were instructed to lie to questions of one predefined category and to otherwise tell the truth. A preceding cue indicated the category and therewith the abstract need to lie or to tell the truth regarding the subsequent question which was not exactly known before. Conceptually replicating our former results (Schnuerch et al., 2024), we found increased amplitudes of fronto-central P2, P3a, Contingent Negative Variation and parietal P3b along with reduced centro-parietal alpha power following lie compared to truth cues. This shows that cues indicating the need to lie increased attentional, anticipatory and preparatory processes to facilitate deceptive responses toward self-relevant stimuli. Overall, our observed EEG markers of enhanced mobilization of cognitive resources in the period leading up to deception might stimulate developments of innovative ways of lie detection based on the preparation rather than execution of deceptive responses.

In recent years, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) - the gold standard for experimental stress induction - has been refined for online-, virtual-reality- (VR), and smartphone-based applications. The development of such TSST variants has been driven by a desire for improved standardization and resource efficiency (VR) as well as by the need for greater flexibility in application contexts (online and smartphone) that became especially apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. My poster shows recent data as achieved with online-, VR-, and smartphone-based TSST variants with a special emphasis on cortisol responses. As a result, these data clarify that technology-based TSST variants do not trigger cortisol reactivity as strongly as the established “in-person” TSST. Moreover, using remote protocols, researchers must currently accept compromises regarding the assessment of other stress indices capturing activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Such aspects may be considered limitations of refined TSST protocols but future advances in technology may help to eliminate them. On the one hand, technology-based TSST variants will most likely catch up with the “in-person” TSST in terms of cortisol reactivity as they become more realistic and more immersive. On the other hand, one may expect the emergence of new techniques to assess stress via portable devices and wearables. Following this path, refined TSST variants may offer great potentials: They allow to study stress in its contextual determinants, in more diverse samples, and to unravel what really drives cortisol reactivity. Thereby, technology-based TSST variants may contribute to theoretical progress on the concept of stress.

Healthy people process self-related feedback about personality traits in a positively biased style. In previous studies, we have shown participants integrate desirable feedback more than undesirable feedback after a real-life interaction with peers.

In psychotherapy, however, patients are often asked to imagine social feedback by close or distant others. It is unclear, whether people process the imagined feedback in this style, and whether the realism of the imagined feedback influences this positively biased processing.

We recruited healthy adults (pilot study n=37, pre-registered study n=85) to participate in the social feedback task, in which participants were asked to rate themselves and an average person on forty traits before and after receiving prompts to imagine good or bad feedback from others. Participants were also asked to report how realistic the feedback was for them.

Using linear mixed modelling, we found participants displayed the positively biased processing only for the self-related feedback, i.e., they integrated the desirable feedback significantly more than the undesirable feedback, but this cognitive pattern was reversed when processing the other-related feedback.

Moreover, we found participants rated the desirable feedback as more realistic than the undesirable feedback, both for themselves and the average person.

Finally, we found a significantly positive relationship between the realism of the imagined feedback and participants’ updating on their trait ratings, i.e., they integrated feedback more that they considered to be more realistic.

By testing the influence of realism estimates on imagined feedback, this study provided a more comprehensive understanding of self- and other-related feedback processing.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is a highly effective treatment for severe depression, though its neurobiological mechanisms remain incompletely understood. To explore ECT-induced changes in brain function, we analyzed a preliminary resting-state fMRI dataset from 16 depressed in-patients undergoing five weeks of ECT, with scans acquired weekly using a 3T MRI system.

We examined voxel-wise measures of spontaneous neural activity and local connectivity; specifically, regional homogeneity (ReHo) and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF). Threshold-free cluster enhancement was applied to correct for multiple comparisons. Additionally, graph-theoretical metrics of whole-brain functional connectivity were computed, though these did not survive correction for multiple testing.

Clinically, patients showed significant symptom reduction (HAMD-21: M₁ = 24.06, M₅ = 12.19; t(15) = 8.16, p < 0.000001). Neuroimaging analyses revealed increased ReHo in frontal, parietal, and cingulate cortices, alongside decreases in occipital regions. Similarly, fALFF increased in the prefrontal cortex and right pallidum, with decreases again observed in visual areas.

Increased ReHo and fALFF in prefrontal and orbitofrontal regions may reflect enhanced executive function, emotional regulation, and cognitive control, potentially contributing to the observed clinical improvement over the course of ECT treatment. Changes in parietal and precuneal areas might furthermore implicate alterations in attention and sensoric integration. Notably, many of these alterations overlap with nodes of the Default Mode Network, a system implicated in self-referential thought and rumination in depression.

Chronic pain conditions are particularly prevalent in older age. This may partly be explained by changes in pain processing regions in the brain, particularly areas involved in cognitive modulation of pain. This is the top-down control of pain through factors such as attention, expectations, beliefs and emotions. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) provides a valuable approach for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying these age-related changes. While aging is generally associated with reduced within-network connectivity, its specific role in pain modulation remains unclear.

To address this, we compared rsFC within a set of key regions involved in pain modulation between young and older adults and examined its relationship with the degree of pain relief experienced through distraction. Our findings revealed significant reductions in functional connectivity strength in older adults. Importantly, reduced pain relief was significantly associated with decreased connectivity between the periaqueductal gray and right insula, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and right insula, and the ACC and left amygdala.

These results highlight the importance of the functional integrity of the pain modulation network for effective pain control and suggest that aging compromises this system, potentially contributing to increased pain sensitivity in older individuals.

Voluntary direction of attention towards or away from a stimulus strongly influences how that stimulus is processed in the brain. From a predictive coding perspective, this influence is increasingly understood in terms of precision weighting—attention selectively increases the gain on prediction error units, amplifying neural responses to unexpected events by enhancing their perceived reliability. However, prior studies have relied on novel or deviant stimuli to elicit prediction errors, which introduces confounds such as adaptation effects and involuntary attentional capture by new stimulus features. These factors make it difficult to isolate the specific effects of voluntary attention on prediction error.

To circumvent these issues, the present study measured omission responses—brain responses elicited when a predicted stimulus is unexpectedly omitted—allowing us to investigate the influence of voluntary attention without introducing new sensory input. EEG was recorded in a 2×2 design, manipulating two aspects of voluntary attention: (1) whether participants attended to a visual vs. an auditory target, and (2) whether the target appeared at a predictable time point vs. at any moment. Omission responses were elicited by presenting clapping hands on a screen, where the clapping sound was occasionally omitted.

While more participants are required, preliminary results (N=24) show early sensory-related omission N1 responses for all conditions, which appear to be unaffected by attention. Instead, attention seems to modulate higher-level processing stages (omission P3), showing larger omission amplitudes for auditory compared to visual attention. Results are discussed within the broader framework of attention and prediction research.

Humans constantly navigate decisions between persisting with a known option (exploitation) or seeking alternatives (exploration)—a fundamental aspect of adaptive behavior. Although behavioral studies have provided valuable insights into these decision-making processes, paradigms examining their neural correlates are scarce and typically limited to animal research, leaving a gap in our understanding of human decision-making. Bridging this gap is essential for advancing our knowledge of decision-making and exploring its links to clinical conditions such as depression, ADHD, and OCD, where altered exploration and exploitation may be implicated.

To address this, we developed a novel paradigm to investigate the neural correlates of exploration and exploitation decisions under dynamic reward contingencies. This paradigm enables the examination of decision-making processes involved when individuals shift from exploitation (remaining in a condition with decreasing reward probability) to exploration (switching to a new condition despite uncertain reward value and a temporary loss of reward availability, i.e., a waiting penalty) and the characterization of associated neural signatures.

Using this paradigm, we examine the event-related potential (ERP) in response to the probabilistic reward feedback to explore ERP differences between exploration and exploitation phases. Additionally, our ongoing research aims to explore intraindividual associations between ERP components and performance measures in this paradigm and those observed in established reward-processing and cognitive control tasks.

At the conference, we will present the paradigm, discuss its applications for EEG research, and share results from the first pilot EEG data collected, illustrating how the paradigm can contribute to understanding decision-making processes and their neural correlates.

In Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), specific cues that predict particular outcomes can trigger instrumental responses associated with those outcomes. This study investigated whether an outcome-specific PIT effect can emerge under minimal conditions that disrupt the link between Pavlovian cues and instrumental responses using cognitive load and directed forgetting. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) a computer crash condition with cognitive load; (2) a computer crash condition without cognitive load; and (3) a no crash condition with cognitive load. During the Pavlovian phase, participants learned cue–outcome associations. In the subsequent transfer phase, those in the crash conditions were instructed to forget the learned associations due to a fake computer crash and completed the task under cognitive load or no load.

Our findings replicated a significant outcome-specific PIT effect in both crash conditions, supporting the robustness of PIT even when memory for Pavlovian contingencies is intentionally disrupted. Specifically, PIT scores were significantly reduced in the crash/load condition compared to the crash/no load condition, suggesting that cognitive load undermines inferential processing that supports PIT. However, a significant PIT effect was still observed in the crash/load group, supporting the idea that associative learning can persist even under cognitive strain and memory disruption. These results demonstrate that that PIT can be preserved under minimal inferential support.

Oxytocin, a neuropeptide and hormone, plays a crucial role in social behavior and affective processing, yet its influence on approach-avoidance tendencies in social anxiety remains unclear. This study examines how intranasal oxytocin administration modulates approach-avoidance behavior in individuals with high vs. low levels of social anxiety. Using a between-subjects design, where participants either received oxytocin or a placebo, we analyze behavioral and fMRI data from a classic Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) with emotional facial expressions. Unlike many oxytocin studies that have primarily focused on males, our sample includes individuals of male and female biological sexes, with menstrual cycle phase controlled in female participants. Additionally, baseline hormone levels (e.g., cortisol, testosterone) were measured and explored as potential moderators.

Preliminary behavioral analyses indicate that highly socially anxious participants show faster, and more accurate responses compared to those with low social anxiety. The congruency effect in response times, defined as the performance difference between affect-congruent and affect-incongruent trials, was absent in highly socially anxious participants under placebo but was observed under oxytocin. For planned neuroimaging analyses, we will first conduct a whole-brain analysis to identify general brain regions involved in the congruency effect and then examine how oxytocin, anxiety levels, and sex modulate neural activity within these regions of interest (ROIs), along a priori ROIs in the amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). A further psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis is planned to determine whether oxytocin modulates functional connectivity between vlPFC and amygdala and whether this effect differs between sexes and anxiety levels of participants.

Social anxiety (SA) and substance use disorder (SUD) are highly comorbid. Our planned study aims to investigate how individuals with SA may develop SUD, focusing on both psychological and neurobiological mechanisms.

The dual-system model of SUD posits that behavior is guided by a goal-directed system, located in the prefrontal cortex, and a habitual system, mainly located in the dorsal striatum. Research suggests that individuals with SA may initially use substances such as alcohol or cannabis to relieve negative arousal and enhance social functioning—a goal-directed form of self-medication, potentially driven by substance-related expectancies. Over the course of repeated substance use, a shift from goal-directed control to habitual patterns is thought to reflect the development of SUD.

Our study aims at investigating several factors contributing to this shift in individuals with SA. For example, substance-related expectancies may promote early goal-directed substance use, while acute social stress may impair goal-directed control and drive a shift toward habitual patterns. SA might therefore be a risk factor for an early shift from goal-directed to habitual substance use.

We hypothesize that the formation of substance-related expectancies, combined with habit-driven craving under acute stress, contributes to increased vulnerability to SUD among individuals with SA. To test this, we will examine (1) the psychosocial mechanisms underlying expectancy formation and (2) the neural correlates of stress-induced, habit-driven craving using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This research may offer novel insight into early risk markers and inform prevention strategies for socially anxious individuals.

Decision-making is an essential cognitive process often impaired in mental disorders like schizophrenia (SZ) and alcohol use disorder (AUD). Since cognitive deficits may disrupt distinct phases of risk-taking—including decision-making, outcome anticipation, and feedback processing—paradigms like the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) allow for behavioral and neural dissociation of these components. This pre-registered study used fMRI and BART to compare risk-taking behavior and associated neural activity among individuals with SZ, AUD, and healthy controls (HC).

68 participants (19 SZ, 23 AUD, 26 HC) completed the BART, with fMRI analyses focusing on key regions associated with decision-making, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), insula, and nucleus accumbens (Nacc).

HC exhibited widespread activation across cognitive, emotional and reward-related regions (ACC, DLPFC, insula, NAcc, OFC) during all phases, replicating prior BART findings. AUD showed restricted engagement (primarily DLPFC, insula, OFC), particularly during anticipation and reward. SZ relied heavily on prefrontal regions (DLPFC, mPFC) and insula, particularly during uncertain reward and loss. Group contrasts were nonsignificant at corrected thresholds, though exploratory analyses suggested disorder-specific patterns.

HCs recruit a consistent set of regions across risk-processing phases, while SZ and AUD show distinct, phase-dependent alterations. The absence of significant group differences in ROI analyses may reflect heterogeneity or compensatory mechanisms; future connectivity analyses will clarify whether these activations reflect integrated networks or disorder-specific dysregulation. This study highlights the potential of fMRI and the BART to disentangle the neural mechanisms underlying risky decision-making in psychiatric populations, paving the way for targeted interventions.

Targeted memory reactivation (TMR) is a technique that aims to selectively cue and strengthen memories during sleep by presenting associated sensory cues. Rudoy et al. (2009) provided foundational evidence for TMR by demonstrating improved spatial memory performance when auditory cues were replayed during deep sleep. While this finding has significant implications for understanding memory consolidation, the true effect size and useful potential of TMR remain uncertain. The ManyBeds project is a large-scale, multi-lab replication study designed to rigorously test the TMR effect. Across 13 labs from three continents, behavioral and sleep-EEG data from 600 participants will provide a precise estimate of the TMR effect and insights into the robustness and variability of analyses. Using a split-half dataset, the project employs a many-analysts approach where teams preregister their analyses, exchange feedback, and submit reproducible scripts, allowing validation of results on the withheld dataset. ManyBeds further aims to explore contextual factors that influence replication outcomes, such as researcher expectations and analysis choices. ManyBeds not only addresses questions about replicability, robustness, and variability in sleep-dependent memory research but also serves as a model for Big Team Science approaches. Here, we will discuss the study’s aims, current progress, and its potential to advance replicability and transparency in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Interoception refers to the processing and perception of afferent signals from internal organ domains. It can be sub-divided into ‘interoceptive accuracy’ (the correspondence between actual and perceived interoceptive signals), ‘interoceptive sensibility’ (confidence ratings), and ‘interoceptive attention’ (the tendency of attentional resources focused on interoception, as assessed by evoked brain potentials). Yet a key question is whether interoceptive abilities generalize across organ systems or reflect modality-specific processes. This study investigated cross-modal interoception by assessing cardiac and respiratory interoceptive performance in 84 healthy young adults. Participants completed two heartbeat perception tasks (heartbeat counting task/HCT; heartbeat discrimination task/HDT) and a modified respiratory resistance detection task (RRDT) to assess interoceptive accuracy. Trait and state anxiety (STAI) were assessed, and continuous ECG and EEG were recorded during rest and the HCT to derive heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs), an indicator of cardiac interoceptive attention. Correlational analysis revealed a positive correlation between cardiac interoceptive accuracy based on the HCT and the HDT, suggesting that both tasks reflect the same construct. However, no significant correlation emerged between interoceptive accuracy and interoceptive attention (i.e. HEPs), suggesting a partial independence between interoceptive facets. Furthermore, interoceptive accuracy based on respiratory detection and heartbeat perception were unrelated, providing no support for cross-domain generalizability. State anxiety was positively associated only with interoceptive sensibility in the HDT, suggesting that affective states may selectively modulate self-perceived interoceptive ability without improving accuracy. These findings support a facet-specific and domain-specific view of interoception, as only measures reflecting the same construct (i.e. cardiac interoceptive accuracy) were associated.

The visual awareness negativity (VAN) has been proposed as a neuronal correlate of consciousness (NCC). It is typically obtained by comparing trials in which a stimulus was perceived with trials in which it was not. However, if the VAN represents a true NCC, it should be detectable in conditions where participants consciously perceive stimuli despite their physical absence, such as during visual illusions. Our study (N = 60) aimed to test this hypothesis by employing the sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI). In SIFI, a single briefly flashed white disk is paired with two brief sounds, generating the illusion of a second flash. This paradigm allows for investigating event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with visual illusions, as they coincide with a precisely timed auditory stimulus, enabling the inference of the illusory percept's onset. We employed a modified perceptual awareness scale (PAS) to obtain trial-by-trial reports of subjective perception. ERPs were analyzed by comparing trials with and without illusory percepts under the same physical conditions. We observed an enhanced negativity over occipital-parietal electrodes in the expected VAN window (250 to 300 ms). Our findings suggest that not only veridical perceptions enhance negative potentials over posterior areas in the VAN interval but also illusory percepts, fostering the interpretation of the the VAN as an NCC.

Sleep spindles are waxing and waning 11-17 Hz oscillations generated through thalamocortical loops implicated in sleep-dependent memory consolidation. EEG studies identified slower frontal (<13 Hz) and faster posterior spindles (>13 Hz), yet few studies have used localization in source space, which is possible by utilizing the increased spatial resolution that magnetoencephalography (MEG) offers. Here, we explore both spatial and temporal properties of sleep spindles using whole-night, whole-brain eLORETA-transformed MEG time series data (n = 11, 4 nights each). We identified spindle events across the brain with a spatial resolution of 8mm. In our analyses, we found three projection axes of spindles: frontal, parietal, and temporal. While we confirm the existence of slow frontal and fast parietal spindles, we additionally found fast spindles in frontal and temporal regions. It is noteworthy, that we only found few spindles within occipital regions. To confirm these analyses, we performed a corresponding analysis on 128-channel, whole-night, whole-brain eLORETA-transformed electroencephalography (EEG) data (n = 17, 2 nights each). Overall, the distribution of spindles found in EEG overlap with those detected in MEG. Both methods are able to the detect deep sources of spindles in the thalamus. Differences in detection are due to their generation through thalamocortical loops, which generate spindles perpendicular to the brain surface, making their fields easier to detect with surface electrodes. All in all, our results are in alignment with previous studies that showed a spatial and morphological differentiation between frontal and parietal spindles, with our results indicating additional types of spindles hitherto overlooked.

Introduction:

Age-related increases in prefrontal fMRI activation may reflect adaptive processes that maintain performance or maladaptive changes contributing to cognitive decline. The mechanisms underlying these age-related differences remain unclear. Age-related decreases in dopamine function may serve a key role in neurocognitive aging.

Here, PET imaging is combined with fMRI to explore molecular correlates of fMRI activation patterns.

Methods:

172 participants (aged 20–78, M = 50, SD = 17.37) performed an N-back working memory task during fMRI and underwent a PET scan with the D1 ligand [11C]SCH23390. Caudate D1 receptor densities, along with age, was entered in a spatiotemporal Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis of fMRI task data. PLS identifies data-driven activation patterns across working memory load conditions without making prior assumptions.

Results:

'Task-general' activations in the striatum and frontal cortex, independent of working memory load, were linked to lower D1 density and older age; 'Task-specific' fronto-parietal activations increased with cognitive load. Younger individuals with greater D1 density exhibited stronger load-dependent activation.

Discussion:

D1 receptor density and age show distinct associations with fMRI activation during working memory. While young age and high D1 density sharpens load-dependent up-regulation of fMRI activity, greater activation outside the task-specific network was linked to older age and correlated with lower D1 receptor density, possibly reflecting maladaptive processes. Integrating fMRI and PET provides valuable mechanistic insights into age-related neurocognitive differences and potential pharmacological targets for restoring brain function in aging.

Die interpersonale Synchronizität ist ein entscheidendes Element für die Etablierung einer Arbeitsbeziehung zwischen Patient: innen und Therapeut: innen (therapeutische Allianz)[1]. Interpersonale Koordination wird auch in Sprache und Kommunikationstechniken reflektiert. Erfolgreiche Dekodierung semantischer Informationen (gegenseitiges Verständnis) wird durch eine geteilte Syntaxrepräsentation widergespiegelt [2]. Wie verschiedene Kommunikationsstile die Tiefe zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen und verbale Synchronizität beeinflussen und welche objektiven Sprachmerkmale eine erfolgreiche Kommunikation begleiten, ist bislang wenig untersucht.

Diese geplante Studie umfasst 40 Teilnehmende, deren Sprache während zweier Aufgaben erhoben wird. Die Teilnehmenden werden erst gebeten, Sätze zu vervollständigen, die in positiven, negativen, neutralen oder mehrdeutigen Kontexten beginnen. Die zweite Aufgabe umfasst einen Dialog, für den zwei Teilnehmende aus 20 Themen unterschiedlichen Intimität-Levels (niedrig, mittel, hoch) jeweils zwei auswählen. Die Instruktionen zum Dialog fordern die Teilnehmenden entweder auf, sich auf interpersonelle Ähnlichkeiten und Gemeinsamkeiten zu konzentrieren (kooperative Kommunikation), oder, sich auf Unterschiede oder Uneinigkeiten zu fokussieren (konträre Kommunikation). Vor und nach den Aufgaben wird die wahrgenommene interpersonelle Nähe und Empathie mittels Fragebögen erhoben.

Wir stellen korrelative Zusammenhänge zwischen Sprachmustern und Beziehungsbewertungen vor, sowie die Unterschiede der Sprachmuster in den komplementären versus oppositionellen Kontexten. Basierend auf dem Homophilie-Prinzip ist bekannt, dass Menschen, die mehr gemeinsam haben, tendenziell stärkere Verbindungen entwickeln im Vergleich zu weniger ähnlichen Personen [3]. Daher wird erwartet, dass kooperative Kommunikation das empathische Engagement und die wahrgenommene Nähe erhöhen, im Gegensatz zur konträren Kommunikation. Stärkere prosodischen Anpassung wird bei kooperativen Kommunikationsinstruktion erwartet, bei der die Sprechenden ihre Tonhöhe, ihren Rhythmus und ihre Intonationsmuster während der Interaktion anpassen.

Irritability, inattention, hyperactivity, and anxiety are common and often comorbid symptoms in youth, which pose a burden for affected youth, their families, and society (Brotman et al., 2017). Their frequent co-occurrence suggests overlapping pathophysiological mechanisms but complicates the identification of distinct etiologies and the development of targeted treatments. To address this, McKay et al. (2024) applied a bifactor modeling approach, focusing on irritability, inattention, and hyperactivity and identified inhibitory control deficits as a shared mechanism linked to atypical white matter microstructure.

Building upon this work, we sought to replicate McKay et al.’s bifactor model in an independent sample of children and adolescents (N = 155), addressing prior limitations by incorporating anxiety as a fourth factor. Our refined model demonstrated an excellent fit (operationalized as Comparative Fit Index > .95, Δ Root Mean Square Error of Approximation < 0.007). The shared factor continued to represent an inhibitory control. Consistent with McKay, we found a marginal association between the shared inhibitory control deficit and mean fractional anisotropy but failed to identify localized white matter changes. We are currently harmonizing the dataset from McKay and the one in the current study to increase statistical power and detect small effects. Additionally, we are applying graph-theoretical analyses (e.g., path transitivity) to diffusion tensor imaging data to further examine white matter connectivity patterns. The results of the ongoing analyses will also be presented in the poster. The bifactor model approach enhances our understanding of transdiagnostic symptoms in youth and their underlying neural mechanisms.

Habits are integral to daily life, yet their formation remains poorly understood. We studied the role of behavioral repetition in habit formation. Using a computational model in an instrumental-learning binary-choice task, we investigated whether choice frequency affects habits independently from reinforcement. In this pre-registered fMRI study (https://osf.io/wbs8n/), 72 participants completed the Reward Pairs task (Nebe et al., 2024), learning stimulus-response-outcome associations under time pressure. We compared several computational models formalizing learning from reinforcement and/or from behavioral frequency. A model combining effects of reward and frequency best predicted choices in a test phase in extinction, indicating that past choice frequency, independent of rewards, influences behavior. Generalized linear mixed effects models provided converging evidence, showing participants preferred stimuli chosen more frequently before, regardless of reinforcement value. At the neural level, BOLD responses in the ventral striatum correlated with RL values, but no such correlation was found for CK values in a priori regions of interest. This suggests that while choice frequency affects behavior, its neural basis may involve different brain regions or connectivity patterns not captured in this study. The study successfully replicated behavioral effects of choice frequency on habit formation (with a shorter training period than in the original study) but leaves open questions about its neural representation, suggesting future research might examine functional connectivity between candidate regions like the dorsal striatum and motor cortex.

The oscillatory activity of schizophrenia patients is disturbed as a consequence of impairment in binding stimulus features to coherent objects. The purpose of this study was to identify oscillatory disturbances in multiple bands during the perceptual organization of motion perception in 20 patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy controls. During continuous presentation of a motion stimulus that induces reversals between two exogenously generated perceptions, electroencephalography (EEG) recordings were conducted from healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. Using this stimulus, examining the differences between healthy controls and schizophrenia patients in the motion binding processes. A Morlet wavelet transformation was used to turn EEG signals into frequency components for the purpose of analyzing inter-trial coherences (ITC) during exogenous motion binding in the delta (1-4 Hz), theta (4-7 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), and gamma bands (28-48 Hz). A significant interaction between region of interest (ROI) and group suggested that this varied between the groups for delta-ITC F (3, 114) = 3.901, p = .032, ηp2 = .093 and for theta-ITC F (3, 114) = 4.685, P < .01, ηp2 = .110, but alpha-ITC (F (3, 114) = .169 p > .05) and gamma-ITC (F (1, 11) = .803 p> .05) were not significantly affected in schizophrenia patients. The delta-ITC was reduced in the occipital area of patients with schizophrenia, as well as theta-ITC was decreased in the central and parietal regions of the brain. This study offers valuable insights into the oscillatory synchronizations associated with motion perception in schizophrenia, revealing ITC differences that suggest alterations in large-scale integration and transfer functions in these patients

People tend to think and act differently in different social roles, for example in their role as a scientist compared to their role as a family member. Supporting this observation, influential social science models propose changes in cognitive processing depending on the social category a person identifies with. However, the nature of these cognitive changes remains understudied. Here we test whether identifying with different social categories changes the organisation of cognitive maps, i.e., mental representations that encode relational knowledge to support effective interactions with the environment.

In our preregistered online experiments, we recruit participants that identify simultaneously with two social categories, i.e., as a student and as female or male. In a first study (N = 40), we successfully implemented a priming procedure to activate the different social categories. In a second study, under each prime, participants learn associations of random objects, inferred through transitive inference. In a subsequent test phase, participants are re-exposed to the social primes and we assess whether they reactivate the corresponding prime-specific map and decide accordingly.

We use reinforcement learning models to simulate the construction of these prime-specific maps and their hierarchical binding to particular social categories. These models help us understand how acquired knowledge is encoded and reactivated in conjunction with social categories. Overall, our work advances a mechanistic understanding of how competing cognitive maps are constructed and organized in different social contexts.

Mental disorders in children and adolescents, particularly affective disorders and anxiety disorders, are closely linked to increased shame-proneness. Shame is a painful, self-conscious emotion that is associated with feelings of worthlessness and inferiority. Despite a well-documented link between shame and mental disorders, there is little research on the underlying neurophysiology of shame. Initial results from event-related potentials in adolescents with depression show that shame is associated with increased amplitude in error monitoring processes (i.e. error-related negativity). Shame is associated with increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which in turn are associated with sensory processing and cognitive control. The EEG microstates of shame have not yet been investigated. Adolescent patients fill out questionnaires on their shame-proneness and internal and external psychological symptoms. They also write down a total of four autobiographical memories that do not evoke any emotions, for which they are ashamed or of which they are proud. They then listen to these memories while an EEG is recorded. Statistical differences in the EEG microstates and the correlations with the tendency to feel shame are reported. The data collection has not yet been completed.

Background:

Attention is a fundamental cognitive mechanism involved in processing emotionally salient information and has been proposed as an underlying factor across various forms of psychopathology. In Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), attentional biases have been proposed to contribute to the development and maintenance of symptoms and are assumed to resemble those observed in anxiety disorders. However, empirical findings from basic research remain inconsistent, likely due to methodological limitations such as the use of unreliable paradigms or generic OCD-related stimuli that insufficiently capture the disorder’s symptom heterogeneity.

Methods:

This preregistered study (https://osf.io/8gkjc) examined attentional biases in OCD on idiosyncratic disorder-relevant stimuli using a free-viewing eye-tracking paradigm. A total of 51 participants with OCD, 64 non-clinical controls, and 50 individuals with spider phobia completed the study.

Results:

No evidence of a vigilance bias (i.e., faster or more likely first fixation on OCD-relevant pictures) was observed in OCD. A maintenance bias emerged but reflected avoidance of negatively valenced stimuli rather than prolonged attention to OCD-relevant material. In contrast, participants with spider phobia showed strategic avoidance of spider-relevant pictures. Exploratory analyses revealed symptom-specific patterns within the OCD group: avoidance of contamination-related pictures and sustained attention on checking-related stimuli.

Discussion:

These findings suggest that attentional biases in OCD are more fine-grained than previously assumed and vary by symptom dimension. Moreover, they challenge the direct transferability of anxiety-based models of attentional biases to OCD. Overall, the results underscore the importance of using idiosyncratic stimuli to adequately capture and investigate the heterogeneity of OCD in basic research settings.

Approach-avoidance conflicts occur when aversive stimuli such as pain are paired with appetitive stimuli such as food or monetary reward. Findings from rodent research highlighted the role of the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) in orchestrating response to approach-avoidance conflicts. Here we used ultra-high field (7T) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test this framework in humans and specify the function of the PAG in human approach-avoidance behavior. Inside the scanner, participants were presented with independent probabilities for painful stimulation and monetary reward and could decide to accept (approach), or to reject (avoid) the offer. This paradigm allowed us to compare PAG activity related to different conflict conditions, i.e., when participants approached despite increasing pain probabilities and avoided despite increasing money probabilities. Analyses of response times (N=32) showed a significant interaction between pain and money probabilities, reflecting an increased conflict for a high likelihood of simultaneously receiving money and pain. For the neuroimaging analyses we regressed trial-by-trial pain and money probabilities against neural activation during outcome anticipation, separately for approach and avoidance trials. The results revealed significant activation in the dorsomedial PAG during anticipated approach despite high pain, but not during anticipated avoidance despite high money probabilities. In line with animal findings, these results confirm an important role of human PAG in approach-avoidance conflict. Specifying its function in conflict resolution, our results show stronger activation for anticipated approach compared to avoidance behavior, located in a caudal subregion of the PAG.

The ability to cause reliable effects in the outer world via actions is central to goal directed behaviour. The subjective experience of this action-outcome relationship is referred to as the sense of agency (SoA), which is closely related to motivation. In the present study, we investigate how feedback inconsistencies affect SoA as well as related motivational processes using a combination of neurophysiological (EEG), behavioral, and self-report measures.

In a colour-dominance task, participants indicate the prevalent colour in a dichromatic pixel field. The two-factorial design comprises a reward manipulation, as well as manipulation of the performance-feedback. High- and low-reward is manipulated trial-wise and is indicated by a reward-cue. The three feedback conditions are 1) a neutral condition (veridical feedback), 2) a self-attribution-of-errors condition (manipulated feedback misrepresenting 33% of correct responses as incorrect), and 3) a system-attribution-of-errors condition (system-altered responses suggesting technical malfunctions for 33% of correct answers). This design systematically varies error-attribution while maintaining constant task parameters.

Preliminary findings suggest that both experimental manipulations affect behaviour and related neural activity. In the self- and system-attribution-conditions, response times are higher while accuracy is lower, indicating uncertainty about given answers. In the self-attribution condition, these effects are stronger in high compared to low reward trials.

In the EEG, effects of the experimental manipulations can be observed in the reward-cue-locked CNV and P3 components, as well as in the feedback-locked FRN. These effects indicate that the manipulation of reward and SoA influence performance by affecting the motivated allocation of cognitive resources.

Dopamine is implicated in regulating key aspects of decision-making, such as explore-exploit behaviour, i.e., choosing between new and potentially better options and exploiting known, previously rewarding options. Imbalances in this trade-off are thought to contribute to maladaptive decision-making in psychiatric disorders linked to dopamine dysfunction, including substance use disorders and schizophrenia. Although pharmacological studies provide evidence of dopamine’s role in balancing explore-exploit behaviour, inconsistent findings highlight the complexity of dopamine’s effects, suggesting that these may depend on interindividual differences related to baseline dopamine function. To help resolve this gap, we investigated the effect of increasing dopaminergic neurotransmission on explore-exploit behaviour during reinforcement learning. Following a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled pre-registered design (see https://osf.io/a4k9j/), we administered the dopamine precursor L-DOPA to a sample of N = 75 healthy participants (n = 32 females) performing a restless four-armed bandit task. We took a model-based approach to quantify explore-exploit behaviour, comparing delta rule and Bayesian learner models (available at https://osf.io/tvxgc/) and assessed the role of interindividual differences in putative markers of baseline dopamine function, including spontaneous eye blink rate, working memory capacity, and impulsivity, in modulating dopamine effects on explore-exploit behaviour.

Introduction. Autism spectrum condition has been associated with a neurodivergence in cognitive inhibition. However, findings are mixed and dependent on task factors like time pressure, complexity, and the availability of substitutive solving strategies.

Methods. We compared 22 autistic (AUT) and 10 neurotypical (NT) adults during a visuospatial “go/nogo” task implemented in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment. The VR headset was combined with an optimized functional near-infrared spectroscopy optode layout for capturing prefrontal cortex activity. First-level participant-wise general linear models (GLMs) were estimated per condition. Second-level linear mixed models per chromophore channel and contrast of conditions were determined, including the z-standardized GLM coefficients. Bootstrapped and Bonferroni-corrected 95% confidence intervals were computed to assess significance. Behavioral reaction times (RTs) and error rates were compared with non-parametric tests and regression analysis.

Results. We observed right-lateralized differences between conditions in oxygenated hemoglobin in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) for the NTs, albeit not for the AUTs. The AUTs demonstrated significantly more errors and faster RTs compared to the NTs. Both groups had significantly slower RTs and fewer errors in the “nogo” compared to the “go” condition. No interactions were found.

Discussion. Our results replicate and extend previous studies that associated right dlPFC activation and inhibition in NTs, yet not in AUTs. This could be key for designing neurofeedback training of executive functions for autistic adults: The AUTs’ responses remained faster and less accurate across conditions compared to the NTs, albeit both groups could respond with greater restraint with an additional “nogo” choice present.

The ability to experience pleasure, known as hedonic capacity, is closely linked to reward anticipation and is regarded as a fundamental component of human motivation. The striatum plays a crucial role in neural reward processing and has also been linked to the personality trait of extraversion, which is strongly associated with positive emotionality. Furthermore, this brain region is considered relevant for working memory processes. This multimodal study thereby combined neural, behavioral and self-report data to investigate the relationship between hedonic capacity, extraversion and working memory. To this end, 120 healthy participants engaged in the Social Incentive Delay Task and a working memory task during a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan. These tasks were complemented by questionnaires and behavioral measurements. The results of the study suggest the presence of a common neural substrate for hedonic capacity and extraversion, anchored in the right ventral and bilateral dorsal striatum. This finding is further supported by its clear consistency across all striatal subareas. Hedonic capacity was most strongly associated with the left caudate and extraversion with the left putamen. Furthermore, we observed an association between the processing of positive stimuli in working memory and the right ventral striatum. These distinct neuronal findings in the ventral and dorsal striatum further enhance our understanding of the reward system's function.

The human brain recognises complex auditory regularities even when attention is focused elsewhere. Auditory regularity extraction studies have typically relied on indirect electrophysiological measures – such as paradigms in which a regularity is violated to probe successful extraction. The aim of the current experiment was to replicate the finding that modulations of the sustained potential in EEG are a direct marker of auditory regularity processing, and further, to discern influences of other cognitive processing. Participants were presented with continuous sound sequences comprised of short tone pips. The pitches of these tones equiprobably either varied randomly (random sequences) throughout the whole sequence, or after an initial random stage, eight-tone patterns were periodically presented (regular sequence). To examine effects of task difficulty, patterns were either repeated identically (strong regularity), or two segments were replaced with a random pitch in each repetition (weak regularity). To differentiate between influences of regularity and attentional processing, auditory stimuli were presented in a passive and an active listening setting. The sustained potential increased rapidly in response to identical pattern repetitions (strong regularities) compared to random stimulation, even in the absence of direct attention. In contrast, non-identical pattern repetitions (weak regularities) showed a diminished modulation of the sustained potential, especially when regularities were not behaviourally relevant. To conclude, there is converging evidence that modulations of the sustained potential are a promising tool to tap into auditory regularity processing. However, careful study and further characterisation, especially regarding influences of attentional processes, are required.

Repetitive Negative Thinking (RNT) and neuroticism are risk factors for internalizing psychopathology. However, their interaction was only investigated on the self-report level and studies elucidating their interrelationship on the neural level are still pending. We therefore explored the interaction of trait RNT and neuroticism with respect to the dynamics of neural networks during RNT.

A total of 120 healthy subjects reported trait RNT and neuroticism followed by a RNT induction paradigm during fMRI. Dynamic coactivation pattern analysis was used to identify a set of recurring brain states and to quantify their persistency and occurrence rates. Next, the effects of trait RNT, neuroticism and their interaction on brain dynamics were tested using regression models.

Negative interactions between RNT and neuroticism were found for persistency and occurrences of brain state involving the salience (SAL) and fronto-parietal network (FPN) as well as a prototypical default mode network (DMN) state. Simple slope analysis revealed that subjects scoring high on neuroticism exhibited a negative association between trait RNT and SAL-FPN as well as prototypical DMN dynamics. Furthermore, trait RNT was positively associated with persistency and occurrence rates of a hybrid FPN-DMN brain state.

Our results suggest that individuals who spend more time in concisely segregated SAL and DMN networks, may be more resilient with respect to RNT and neuroticism, potentially reflecting more adaptive brain states. Furthermore, less segregated brain states, evident by the concurrent activation of functionally antagonistic networks (FPN-DMN), are expressed more often in individuals prone to RNT, likely reflecting disrupted networks interactions.

Background: Previous research suggests that contingency instructions, stating that the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) will not be presented anymore, can enhance extinction learning (Luck & Lipp, 2016) and additional instructions before extinction retrieval can reduce return of fear (Javanbakht et al., 2017). However, immediate pre-retrieval instructions are impractical in therapeutic settings.

Methods: Thus, this study investigated the impact of contingency instructions before and/or after extinction training on extinction learning in 240 participants (120 patients with ADs, 120 healthy controls) using a three-day sequential conditioning paradigm. Electrical shocks and colored lamps served as UCS and conditioned stimuli (CS), with skin conductance responses (SCRs), CS valence, and UCS expectancy ratings as readout measures.

Results: Instructions before extinction training enhanced extinction learning for both patients with ADs and healthy controls across the physiological and subjective measures. Instructed healthy controls displayed even lower SCRs than instructed patients during early extinction. Furthermore, participants receiving post-extinction instructions showed reduced CS differentiation in their SCRs during extinction retrieval. After a reinstatement, instruction timing differentially affected fear responses across contexts. Participants instructed before and after extinction, and uninstructed participants showed higher fear responses in the original conditioning context. Those instructed only before extinction exhibited increased fear responses in extinction and novel contexts, while participants instructed only after extinction showed heightened fear responses exclusively in the extinction context.

Conclusion: The study provides nuanced insights into fear learning mechanisms and potential therapeutic interventions for anxiety disorders, emphasizing the potential of strategic information provision in modulating fear responses.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental disorder characterized by interpersonal difficulties, including challenges with trust and forgiveness. Moral decision-making, which involves the interplay of cognitive and emotional processes, may be impaired in individuals with BPD. This study investigates the neural correlates of moral evaluation in BPD, focusing on the interpretation of intentionality in harm-based scenarios.

This study will include 64 BPD patients and 64 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Participants complete a computer-based task requiring them to evaluate scenarios involving either intentional or accidental harm and judge their moral acceptability while undergoing electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring. EEG analysis focuses on medial frontal negativity (MFN) within 200–350 ms, which is a component associated with conflict monitoring and intention processing. Data analysis will include within-group and between-group comparisons.

Our preliminary analyses suggest that BPD patients show more negative MFN amplitudes in accidental harm scenarios compared to healthy controls, potentially reflecting heightened conflict or misattribution of intent. However, as data collection and analysis are still ongoing, we expect further analysis to yield deeper insights into the neural dynamics of moral judgment and their relationship to behavioral patterns.

These findings provide insights into altered conflict detection and intention attribution in BPD, contributing to a more nuanced view of social cognition deficits in this population. Understanding the neural basis of moral reasoning in BPD may also inform targeted interventions aimed at improving intention regulation and interpersonal functioning.

A crucial aspect of the Theory of Mind is false belief understanding (FBU), which refers to the ability to discern between reality and an agent’s false mental representation of the world. The present ERP study investigates the neural correlates underlying FBU in adults and toddlers aged 33–36 months. We applied a novel event-related potential (ERP) paradigm employing a short-story format with explicitly stated beliefs. Both groups completed the same ERP paradigm.

In adults, an early waveform differentiated the false and true beliefs over frontocentral and parieto-occipital sites around 300–500 ms post-stimulus onset. This component likely reflects the rapid detection and attentional reorientation from external stimuli to internal mental representations. A later waveform, characterized by reversed polarity, differentiated the two belief conditions in adults only, over parietooccipital sites around 750–900 ms, possibly reflecting more elaborate cognitive processes involved in explicit belief reasoning. In toddlers, neural differentiation occurred later (600–900 ms), indicating slower processing than in adults. Specifically, two late waveforms were observed over frontocentral and occipital regions, suggesting prolonged cognitive engagement and a more distributed neural response during FBU. These findings suggest that toddlers rely on broader and less specialized neural networks when processing FBU tasks, aligning with their ongoing neural maturation.

Our study explored developmental differences in the neural mechanisms underlying explicit FBU. Adults exhibit faster, more specialized neural responses, enabling rapid engagement in belief reasoning based on explicit cues without inferential demands. In contrast, toddlers exhibit prolonged neural responses, likely reflecting continued maturation of the cognitive and neural systems underpinning FBU.

Bistable stimuli provide a valuable tool for investigating how the brain maintains perceptual stability or detects changes in the environment. A key mechanism contributing to perceptual stability is hysteresis, where recent prior perceptual experiences influence current perception, resulting in a persistence of the previous percept. In this study, we investigated the neural correlates of hysteresis in both the auditory and visual modality. Participants were presented with ambiguous Necker cubes (Experiment 1) and Shepard tones (Experiment 2) in gradually shifting sequences to induce hysteresis while EEG data were recorded. Behavioural results confirmed the expected hysteresis effect in both modalities (p < .05). Subsequent ITC analysis revealed significant differences between stimulus perception in sequential (hysteresis condition) versus random order. While modality-specific effects emerged, the most prominent shared pattern was a more coherent activation of a region encompassing dorsolateral parts of the precentral, juxtapositional, and prefrontal cortices during the hysteresis condition. These areas have been linked not only to bistable perception but also to working memory and attention—two processes that may be central to hysteresis. Additionally, we observed increased coherence over the lateral occipital complex (LOC) in both modalities during hysteresis. While the LOC is known for its stabilizing role in visual bistability, its involvement in auditory bistable perception has not been previously reported. Our findings suggest that hysteresis arises from a complex interplay of neural networks associated with working memory and attention, supporting perceptual stability across sensory modalities.

Alexithymia is a trait that is characterized by difficulties in identifying and describing emotions. The "decoupling hypothesis" of alexithymia proposes a dissociation between physiological activation and conscious emotional experience that may reduce effective emotion regulation and increase psychological distress and allostatic load. The decoupling hypothesis has a historical root in that alexithymia has been associated with excessive physiological arousal and low awareness of emotions. However, recent research suggests an alternative perspective: individuals with alexithymia may show blunted physiological responses to emotional stimuli despite reporting strong subjective emotions.

Preliminary data on the decoupling hypothesis will be presented. In an ongoing study, we employ an emotion regulation task, in which healthy participants - assessed for alexithymia traits - view negative and neutral images while multiple physiological responses (heart rate, skin conductance, respiration) are recorded. Alexithymia is assessed using the Toronto Alexithymia Questionnaire. We hypothesize that negative images will elicit stronger physiological responses compared to neutral images. Also, we predict that using cognitive reappraisal, as opposed to passive viewing, will lead to reduced heart rate. Additionally, we expect that higher alexithymic traits will be associated with smaller differences in physiological responses between negative and neutral images and weaker congruence between subjective emotional ratings and physiological responses.

Given the heterogenous findings regarding the congruence between self-reported and physiological response during emotion processing and emotion regulation in alexithymia, we aim to enhance our understanding of the psychophysiology of alexithymia. These findings may contribute to better accuracy in future diagnosis and treatment.

Psychosocial adversity (PSA) has been linked to long-term mental health outcomes, yet the underlying biological mechanisms remain unclear. The ImmunoTwin study explores the role of DNA methylation (DNAm) in PSA and psychological symptoms utilizing a sample of monozygotic (MZ) twins, to control for genetic confounders.

Participants completed questionnaires assessing PSA exposure, and psychological symptoms were evaluated through structured clinical interviews. DNAm profiles were derived from whole blood samples and analyzed for differential methylation patterns within twin pairs. The primary objective is to determine whether DNAm variations mediate the relationship between PSA and within-pair differences in psychological symptom severity. Further, we assessed differential methylation in selected genomic regions (CpG sites), and we explored potential associations with psychological symptoms. Finally, we hypothesized that genes exhibiting differential methylation in regulatory regions influence mental health outcomes. Our preliminary results suggest that within-pair differences in psychological symptom severity correspond with alterations in DNA methylation within regulatory gene regions. We are currently investigating additional CpG sites and their potential function as mediators between PSA and psychological symptoms.

These findings may enhance our understanding of epigenetic mechanisms as biomarkers for mental health outcomes, aiding early intervention in high-risk populations.

Negative emotional biases, e.g., when judging facial expressions, are scientifically established concomitants in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and can intensify social challenges and thus contribute to (perpetuation of) depressive symptoms. However, literature is still divided on whether these biases build on congruent mood states or are traits inherent to the disorder itself.

Therefore, this longitudinal approach aims to disentangle state- and trait-dependent aspects of emotional biases in n = 249 patients with MDD and n = 491 healthy control subjects (HC) from the Münster Neuroimaging Cohort. Each assessment consisted of an affective priming task during an MRI in which neutral faces were masked with a subliminally presented happy, sad, mirrored, or no face. To ensure MDD diagnosis, SCID-I interviews were conducted, and severity of depressive symptoms was assessed using Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD). After intervals of 2 years over a total period of 12 years, participants were invited back to the lab and subjected to the same procedure.

Outcome variables of our study were behavioral data, i.e. i) examination of facial expressions and ii) reaction times, and iii) impact of symptom trajectories (i.e., trajectory cluster affiliation) on i) and ii). To account for nested data and various measurement points, multilevel modeling approaches were used.

We are in the final stages of data analysis, but preliminary results suggest that negative emotional biases in the MDD group were mainly state-dependent in both implicit and explicit modalities. Also, the trajectory of symptom development did not significantly influence emotional biases.

Animal models are widely used to study the neurobiological mechanisms underlying mental disorders. While significant progress has been made in understanding the neurobiological basis of threat-related behaviors in animals, advances in developing new or improved treatments for humans suffering from anxiety disorders remain limited. One possible reason for this gap is the uncertain predictive and cross-species translational validity of animal models used in preclinical research. To address this challenge, re-translational approaches aim to establish cross-species translational validity by aligning experimental protocols between species to identify shared processes. With this goal in mind, we investigated the influence of state anxiety on defensive behavioral (Study 1 and 2) and physiological (Study 2) responses in humans using a virtual open field test. State anxiety was experimentally induced using the threat of shock paradigm (Study 1) or by incorporating horror movie-like elements in the virtual environment (Study 2). Contrary to animal findings, state anxiety did not influence behavioral (i.e., thigmotaxis) or physiological defensive responses in healthy individuals. The present findings call into question the cross-species validity of thigmotaxis as a phylogenetically conserved behavioral proxy of anxiety-related states.

Human faces play a crucial role as social cues, making face processing a fundamental cognitive function with high everyday relevance. A key aspect of processing these cues is the dynamic nature of human expressions. However, research on face processing has predominantly been conducted with static 2D representations of faces on monitors. Recent advances in the development of realistic virtual avatars for use in virtual reality (VR) allow for investigation of dynamic face processing in authentic social contexts. In a mobile EEG-VR-experiment, participants explored several rooms within a 3D-360° virtual environment where they alternately encountered dynamic 3D avatars and static 2D images of avatars. Within each room, participants first viewed and memorized the faces of the persons, followed by an immediate recognition task that included previously seen faces alongside unfamiliar ones. During perceptual processing, stimulus-related electrophysiological responses were compared between 3D avatars and 2D images of avatars. Additionally, recognition performance and event-related potentials associated with old/new effects were examined for possible differences in the retrieval mechanisms of faces encoded in 3D or 2D. Initial findings reveal modality-dependent perceptual processing of dynamic compared to static faces, indicating additional cognitive demand but also enhanced encoding for dynamic faces. These differences extend to the recognition performance and the cognitive processes underlying the detection of familiar faces, showing distinct engagement of recognition mechanisms depending on the encoding modality. These findings extend the understanding of real-life relevant face processing highlighting the potential of using virtual avatars to create more ecologically valid and dynamic social contexts.

Virtual Reality (VR)-based encoding has been proposed to enhance memory retrieval through a shift towards recollection. Yet empirical findings remain inconclusive regarding VR’s effect on retrieval performance and on the underlying processes. A key question remains whether potential benefits of VR-based encoding are diminished when retrieval takes place on a conventional desktop – a common practice in memory research due to its practicability and high internal validity. Combining a pilot study and a main study, we explored the modality-dependent comparability of memory performance and retrieval processes. We implemented a source memory paradigm to explore recollection-based and familiarity-based retrieval on the electrophysiological level. Both studies employed desktop- and VR-based encoding of everyday items in a within-design. In an unannounced recognition task conducted on a desktop (pilot study) or in VR (main study), participants had to differentiate between VR-encoded, desktop-encoded and unknown items. When retrieval was performed on a desktop, memory performance did not differ between VR-encoded and desktop-encoded items. Remarkably, the event-related potential indicated that VR-encoded items were more profoundly linked to recollection, whereas desktop-encoded items were more profoundly linked to familiarity. In contrast, VR-based retrieval was accompanied by better recognition of VR-encoded items, yet we observed no differences in the electrophysiological markers of source retrieval. Consequently, our results demonstrate that memory performance and processes may vary independently. Whereas differences in memory performance were only observed under VR-based retrieval, the ERP indicated differences in retrieval processes only during desktop-based retrieval, providing initial insights into the shifts of mnemonic processing across modalities.

People often explore strategically, sacrificing immediate rewards to gain information when information has more value. Although robust on average, individuals vary in how much they consider information value when exploring. Here, we extended an existing task to test whether strategic exploration disappears under counterfactual (cf) feedback—which removes the incentive to explore by providing information regardless of choice—and whether individual differences modulate this effect.

Seventy adults from Prolific completed 128 trials of a horizon task across two blocks (counterbalanced): baseline and counterfactual. Each trial included four forced-choices, for which participants had to select a specific option, and one (short horizon) or four (long horizon) free-choices, for which they chose between two options that yielded rewards with changing probabilities. In the baseline block, only chosen outcomes were shown; in the cf block, both actual and hypothetical outcomes of unchosen options were shown on free-choice trials.

Participants chose the informative option more often in long- vs. short-horizon trials (p<.001), an effect reduced in the cf vs. baseline block (p=.010). Even when choices did not affect information received, participants still favored options with an information bonus in long-horizon trials. Further analysis suggests that individuals who learn better from cf feedback may show a weaker decline in exploration (p=0.083).

As predicted, the inclusion of cf feedback reduced strategic exploration. Cf learning was negatively correlated with information-seeking, as expected, but the effect was only marginally significant. Future experiments will examine why cf learning susceptibility varies across individuals and how it develops over the lifespan.

Physical exercise (PE) is increasingly recognized for its positive effects on brain health. Acute PE may enhance cognitive performance, yet the specific effects of different exercise modalities remain underexplored. This study investigates the effects of 20 minutes of cycling or swimming, as compared to a sedentary control group, on memory performance and inhibitory control and their neurophysiological markers. 97 participants were assigned to one of two exercise groups (swim or bike), or a sedentary control group. Participants performed a memory task consisting of word list encoding, a Go/NoGo distractor task, and free recall both before and after the intervention, while mobile EEG was recorded.

Results revealed that PE had a protective effect on recall performance and Go / NoGo accuracy, preventing the decline observed in the control group, while no significant differences emerged between cycling and swimming. EEG data show a subsequent memory effect in all groups, but no significant differences between them. We found shorter N2 latencies in the swim group, particularly post intervention, indicating a facilitation of inhibitory control.

These findings highlight that acute aerobic exercise benefits cognitive performance, primarily by maintaining accuracy and recall under cognitive load. Differences between cycling and swimming were mostly descriptive. We could not replicate previous findings regarding amplitude modulations of event-related potentials after acute PE. Indications that the swim group showed a facilitation of inhibitory control on a neural level post intervention should be interpreted with caution. Future research should further explore exercise-specific effects, considering different PE modalities, timing, and neurophysiological mechanisms.

Digitally mediated interactions have become increasingly common in our daily lives. Prerecorded videos and mediated interactions differ from direct, face-to-face interactions in the degree of “social presence”. Differences lie in the amount of sensory information available and in the synchronicity of information exchange between interacting individuals. The effects of social presence on empathy and prosocial motivation, as well as their neural correlates, remain to be investigated. In a first behavioral study, 35 participants listened to another participant reporting personal negative life events in three different contexts: in a direct face-to-face interaction, in a live video call interaction, and in a prerecorded video. We analyzed the listeners’ empathic accuracy, and affective and motivational empathic responses by self- and other-assessments of the story-tellers’ and the listeners’ states. The listeners’ self-reported prosocial motivation decreased with reduced social presence. There was also a tendency for diminished empathic accuracy with reduced social presence, but no effect on listeners’ affective empathy. These data suggest that in naturalistic story-telling contexts, the degree of social presence affects prosocial motivation but less so empathic accuracy and affective empathy. We are currently conducting an EEG study using the same paradigm and will present preliminary data on the neural and physiological correlates of these effects. The results may have implications for mediated social interactions like online psychotherapy or telemedicine.

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming increasingly popular in psychology, offering a better reflection of real-life demands than computer-based setups. However, VR studies also present unique safety challenges. Here, we analyse these challenges in studies investigating rapid decision-making under threat. Participants were asked to collect resources (fruit) while evading potential threats in naturalistic environments. Across seven experiments, 181 participants completed over 9150 trials with more than 75 hours of playtime in which they were required to behave dynamically (fleeing, hiding, dodging, and fighting), moving at high speed (> 3 m/s). Overall, there were 42 incidents of participants slipping or stepping outside the designated play area (9x5m; 10x6m). Implementing targeted improvements in lab and game design (e.g., optimized virtual boundaries, strategic placement of virtual obstacles) reduced incident rate to near zero. Additionally, in one study with repeated close threat encounters, we observed intrusive memory over a few days, rendering the paradigm suitable for studying intrusions. However, these did not last long and declined to zero over seven days following the experiment (n = 30), similar to what is observed in the trauma film paradigm. These insights demonstrate that VR experiments can be designed safely for high-intensity, ecologically valid psychological research. VR experiments allow participants to interact with a task more naturally and enable investigation of psychological phenomena we could not investigate with computer-based setups. We offer a comprehensive guide for conducting these experiments while minimizing safety concerns, thereby enabling the investigation of complex psychological phenomena that were previously inaccessible using traditional methods.

Recent research has increasingly focused on the role of physical exercise (PE) in preserving and enhancing cognitive functions across the lifespan. However, the effects on language and verbal tasks remain under-explored, particularly in individuals with Down syndrome (DS), the most prevalent genetic cause of intellectual disability (Loosli et al., 2021). People with DS experience cognitive decline as early as their 50s and have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (Levin et al., 2023).

The "DS in Motion" project offers a novel approach to address these gaps by investigating the effects of a structured PE program—specifically conceptualized for adults with DS—on verbal abilities and cognitive functions. In addition, the study examines its impact on motor skills, body composition, and overall quality of life. Based on evidence on enhancing cognitive functions, the program promotes an active lifestyle to improve overall well-being and support long-term independence. This randomized controlled trial includes pre-, post-, and follow-up assessments; data collection is ongoing, with 35 participants currently included in the study. The project is built on four pillars: (1) a six-week structured exercise intervention, (2) educational awareness to boost intrinsic motivation; (3) empowerment strategies for long-term PE engagement, and (4) a "train-the-trainer" module for caregivers and trainers to ensure long-term implementation and support.

Background: Resting-state recordings (RSR) are widely used to investigate neural alterations in mental and neurological disorders. Previous studies have shown that subjective experience during RSR varies substantially. However, these recordings are often conducted with minimal cognitive constraints, using instructions such as “lie still” while the influence of different instructions remains largely underexplored.

Methods: We examined the effects of four different RSR instructions derived from the literature on subjective experience: (1) “Let your mind wander freely”, (2) “Think of nothing,” (3) “Focus on your breathing,” and (4) “Think about what you have done today so far”. Thirty participants completed two sessions approximately one week apart. All instructions were presented sequentially, followed by a 5-minute EEG RSR. After each recording, participants reported their subjective experience using the Amsterdam Resting-State Questionnaire (ARSQ 2.0).

Results: A repeated measures ANOVA revealed large effects of instruction type on the combined dependent variables, i.e., the ten dimensions of the ARSQ 2.0, in both sessions.

Relevance: Different RSR instructions led to distinct subjective experiences. Assuming that subjective experience influences neural activity, these findings raise concerns about the validity of studies lacking a standardized RSR protocol and the comparability of studies using different instructions. We expect to observe similar effects in the upcoming EEG analysis, particularly when using EEG features that have been shown to reliably reflect subjective experience, such as signal complexity and the aperiodic EEG component (i.e., the 1/f slope).

Previous research on emotion regulation (ER) focused mostly on single strategies. However, adaptive ER is better defined as the flexible, context-dependent use of different strategies to achieve personal goals. ER flexibility is often assessed using ecological momentary assessment or experimental paradigms, but an efficient self-report measure is lacking. Our aim was to develop such a measure for self-reported ER flexibility. A comprehensive 41-item version was developed and tested on a pilot sample (N = 155), followed by stepwise item reductions to 26 and 12 items (N = 1280). Finally, 10 items were retained and validated in an independent sample (N = 347). To examine criterion validity, well-being was assessed using the WHO-5 questionnaire. Item characteristics and validation of the final 10-item FlexER-Scale will be presented, as well as relationships between ER flexibility and well-being. In sum, our scale contributes significantly to ER flexibility research by providing a novel, efficient self-report measure. Further validation is needed in larger and more diverse samples, including samples with ER deficits.

Background: The analysis of cortisol and other analytes in hair samples is frequently used to assess long-term hormonal activity in psychoneuroendocrine research. However, the impact of storage duration on analyte stability remains insufficiently researched. This study systematically examines the effect of storage over 12 months utilizing a within-subject design.

Methods: A total of 81 healthy participants provided hair from the posterior vertex region. Samples were segmented (3 cm) and separated into five aliquot parts, which were either analyzed immediately or stored under standardized conditions for periods of 3, 6, 12 (and 24) months. To control for systematic laboratory batch effects, sampling was spread across a one-year period (four cycles, three months apart), ensuring that analyses of particular storage lengths were distributed across analytical cycles. Steroid hormones (cortisol, cortisone, progesterone, dehydroepiandrosterone) and endocannabinoids (AEA, 1/2-AG, OEA, SEA, PEA) were quantified using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

Results: Significant declines in hair cortisol and cortisone concentrations were observed after 6 and 12 months. Similarly, progesterone, 1/2-AG, OEA and AEA concentrations declined over time. Conversely, SEA and PEA concentrations increased significantly after 12 months of storage. Longer storage periods also resulted in reduced reliability, as correlation strengths between initial and delayed analyses declined with increasing storage time.

Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate effects of storage duration on the majority of hair-derived analyte concentrations. This highlights the necessity for shorter and standardized storage durations (especially within studies) and transparent reporting practices. Future studies are needed to better understand the mechanisms underlying storage-related changes in analytes.

Return of fear (ROF) after successful fear extinction poses a major challenge to the long-term effectivity of its clinical counterpart, exposure therapy. Previous work has shown timing-dependent effects of stress hormones such as cortisol on memory, and specifically, an impairment of context-dependent extinction memory retrieval, leading to an increase in ROF. Beyond these non-genomic cortisol effects, not much is known about genomic cortisol effects emerging over time, although their mechanisms of action are highly relevant for the understanding of relapse in patients with anxiety and stress-related disorders.

The current study investigates non-genomic and genomic cortisol effects on ROF after extinction training in multiple contexts. To this end, 120 healthy participants (60 women) undergo fear acquisition training with two CS+ coupled with the UCS and one CS- not paired with the UCS in a specific background context. The succeeding extinction training takes place in one (non-generalized, CS+N; CS-) or four (generalized, CS+G) other contexts. On the following day, participants are randomly assigned to one of three groups (placebo control, non-genomic cortisol, genomic cortisol, reflecting different timings of pharmacological administration) before the start of a retrieval and reinstatement test phase, during which all three CS are presented in the acquisition, extinction and a novel context. Expectancy ratings, affect, pupillometry measurements and skin conductance responses serve as indicators of ROF. Preliminary results of data acquired so far will be presented and discussed.

The ability to regulate emotions is closely linked to executive control processes, particularly inhibitory control. Impaired inhibition of emotional stimuli can contribute to dysfunctional emotion regulation (ER), which plays a key role in various psychological disorders. The emotional Stroop task is an established paradigm for assessing these inhibitory processes by measuring the interference of emotional stimuli on reaction times. In a sample of N = 150 participants, inhibitory control was assessed using an emotional Stroop task with coloured emotional words. Subsequently, individual subjective values of ER strategies were estimated using the CAD paradigm (Scheffel et al., 2023). In the Stroop task, no interference effect on reaction times or error rates was found on group-level. Nevertheless, the association between inhibitory control and subjective values of ER strategies will be investigated on individual-level using a mixed model approach. Implications and future directions will be discussed.

Background: Hair analysis is increasingly utilized to measure cumulative long-term hormone levels. However, it remains unclear from which specific scalp region hair should be sampled to maintain the best results. Here, we systematically compared different quality characteristics of the two most frequently used sampling areas—the posterior vertex and the occipital region. To enhance methodological standardization, we provide precise anatomical landmarks for clear region definition.

Methods: Participants (N = 53) provided twelve hair samples across two time points, three months apart. At each time point, six hair samples (three from each region) were analyzed for cortisol, cortisone, progesterone, dehydroepiandrosterone and endocannabinoids (AEA, 1/2-AG, OEA, SEA, PEA) using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Regions were compared regarding intra-region variability, mean concentration differences and test-retest correlations.

Results: Significant mean differences in analyte concentrations were observed between scalp regions: hair cortisol (p = .002, η^2 = .19) and cortisone (p = .009, η^2 = .14) concentrations were significantly increased in the occipital region, while OEA, SEA and PEA concentrations (all p < .001) were higher at the posterior vertex. However, no consistent differences were found regarding intra-region variability and test-retest correlations.

Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of sampling from a defined scalp region for endocrine hair analyses. While neither scalp region was unequivocally superior, the observed differences in mean concentrations emphasize the need for enhanced methodological standardization in future research. We propose anatomical landmarks for precise region localization and provide practical recommendations regarding the choice of sampling region.

While sleep is known to facilitate memory consolidation, the Sleep and Synaptic Homeostasis Hypothesis (SHY) emphasizes its role in global synaptic downscaling post-wakefulness, crucial for preventing cognitive overload and enabling the assimilation of new information. While SHY is well supported at the molecular and behavioral level, the relationship between sleep characteristics and synaptic downscaling remains unclear. Since direct measurement of synaptic strength in vivo is not possible in humans, alternative approaches, such as assessing glutamate levels via magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) have been employed, as glutamate serves as a major molecular marker of synaptic strength changes. Animal studies show higher glutamate concentrations during wakefulness and REM sleep, with reductions during NREM sleep. In humans, Volk et al. found overnight decreases in glutamate-glutamine (Glx) levels, correlating with slow-wave activity, but did not assess wakefulness-induced Glx increases. In this study, 30 participants underwent three MRS sessions at 12-hour intervals and one polysomnography-monitored sleep session. We observed increased Glx levels following wakefulness and reductions after sleep, with greater decreases in individuals who spent more time in NREM sleep. These findings support the role of sleep, particularly NREM sleep, in synaptic downscaling and metabolic recovery. By linking sleep duration to Glx reduction, our study provides further evidence for SHY, emphasizing the restorative function of sleep in neural homeostasis.

Background: The aging population poses significant challenges to healthcare systems worldwide, requiring innovative solutions to meet the growing demand for care services. Recent technological advances in robotics offer promising opportunities to support healthcare delivery, improving both the efficiency of care and the well-being of older adults. By integrating robots into care settings, healthcare providers can potentially improve patient outcomes while alleviating some of the pressures on healthcare systems.

Methods: This study used a within-design approach, comparing interactions with a human partner and a social robot ("Navel") using a standardized interview format. Physiological markers (salivary cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase, and salivary oxytocin) and subjective ratings of trust, well-being, and affect were assessed in a geriatric sample of 35 participants.

Results: Results showed no significant differences in salivary markers, positive or negative affect, or overall well-being between human-robot interactions. However, trust ratings were significantly higher for human interactions.

Discussion: This study suggests that robotic interactions are not harmful and could be a viable solution to support healthcare services, especially for standardized tasks. The integration of robots can enhance patient care by providing consistent and personalized support, potentially improving health outcomes. Further research is needed to explore the full potential of robots in supporting healthcare services and to address the ethical considerations surrounding their use.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are strongly associated with an increased risk of psychopathology, but the mechanisms linking ACEs to maladaptive outcomes remain unclear. Associative learning, which shapes emotional and cognitive responses to environmental cues, may play a critical role in this relationship. In this study, 174 participants (98 with ACEs, 76 controls) underwent a one-day fear conditioning paradigm, which included fear acquisition, generalization, extinction, and a return of fear test after reinstatement. Individuals with a history of ACEs exhibited reduced conditioned stimulus (CS) discrimination, primarily driven by blunted responses to the CS+. This pattern was observed across fear acquisition, generalization, and return of fear in subjective arousal ratings and trend-wise in skin conductance responses (SCR). Exploratory analyses aimed at disentangling the effects of ACEs and mental disorders provided preliminary evidence suggesting an additive impact on CS discrimination (e.g., the poorest discrimination was shown by subjects who experienced both ACEs and developed a mental disorder). These findings indicate that blunted threat responses may serve as a mechanistic pathway through which ACEs become physiologically and neurobiologically embedded, thereby increasing the risk for psychopathology.

Ventral temporal cortex (VTC) and lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) contain category-selective regions, which are involved in the recognition and perception of categories like faces, body parts or words. Some category-selective regions are known to be shaped by experience: For instance, extensive exposure to written words during reading education leads to larger word-selective regions. However, the effect of experience on other category-selective regions is less clear. Here, we asked the question, if sign language, which relies on visual information conveyed by the face and hands, influences face- and hand-selective regions. To answer this question, we collected fMRI-data in two groups: 18 signing adults without hearing impairments (mean age M= 35.78, SD= 13.43, 17 female), who use sign language extensively (mean sign language use per week M= 18.82 h, SD =14.18), and 18 control participants (M= 36.44; SD= 11.44, 15 female). During scanning participants watched images of 10 categories (including faces and hands) while performing an oddball task. We compared the activity for faces and hands in anatomically-defined regions of interest (VTC, LOTC) between the groups. Our results show that hearing signers have significantly more hand-selective activation in both VTC and LOTC compared to controls. Face-selective activation was numerically higher in signers compared to controls, but the difference was not statistically significant. These findings enhance our understanding of how category-selective regions are shaped by experience.

Emotion regulation (ER) is a key requirement for daily psychological functioning. Previous research suggests that cortisol may affect ER success. In detail, exogenous cortisol administration has been shown to increase the ability to downregulate emotional arousal, mediated by enhanced prefrontal control and reduced amygdala activity. Cortisol secretion is not only triggered in response to stress but also follows a circadian rhythm, peaking approximately 30min after awakening and decreasing throughout the day. In this study, we thus examined for the first time whether circadian variations in cortisol levels modify cognitive ER performance. To this end, 65 participants (34 women) completed a computer-based ER paradigm twice, once in the morning and once in the evening on two separate days when differences in endogenous cortisol levels are expected to be largest. During this task, they were asked to up- and downregulate their emotional responses to negative pictures via reappraisal or to simply view negative and neutral pictures. Intensity ratings and heart rate variability (HRV) served as measures of ER performance. Salivary samples were collected at various time points throughout both testing days to quantify cortisol and alpha-amylase concentrations. As expected, cortisol levels were higher in the morning compared to the evening. In contrast to our hypotheses, participants showed no difference in intensity ratings and HRV when being tested in the morning compared to the evening. However, women rated negative pictures as more intense in the upregulation condition compared to men. Endogenous cortisol levels might be insufficient to elicit cortisol’s beneficial effect on ER.

We investigated the temporal dynamics of attentional allocation to same-colored objects in early visual processing, tracking how attention facilitates their early sensory representations. At the trial onset, four identically colored arcs started to flicker at four different frequencies, respectively, to elicit steady-state visual-evoked potentials (SSVEPs). After about 1500 ms, a probabilistic spatial cue indicated one arc as the likely target location. With cue onset, the arcs switched to a specific color configuration. In the same-color condition, the adjacent arc shared the cued arc’s color; in the different-color condition, all arcs were uniquely colored. Targets (small gray stripes) appeared between 200-700 ms after cue onset at either the cued arc or an adjacent, uncued arc of the same or different color. Behavioral results revealed both spatial and feature-based effects: responses were faster for targets on cued arcs, and critically, invalid targets were detected faster when appearing on a same-colored vs. differently colored arc. SSVEP time courses revealed sustained enhancement of both the cued arc and its same-colored counterpart after the spatial cue but not of differently colored uncued arcs. Specifically, the time courses of SSVEP amplitude enhancement of both grouped elements were nearly identical in the first 500 ms post-cue. These findings indicate that the presence of a same-colored arc shaped the temporal dynamics of attentional selection in the early visual cortex. However, spatial selectivity remained unchanged, reinforcing the notion that location- and feature-based attention operate independently.

Cueing participants in a visual detection task to attend to a particular feature, such as color, leads to a bi-phasic time course: rapid facilitation of the cued color, followed by delayed suppression of different colors in the display. Is rapid facilitation a consequence of the given instruction that prioritizes “to attend” and would an instruction “to ignore” result in much faster suppression followed by a delayed facilitation?

During two EEG recording sessions, we instructed 20 participants either to attend to two cued colors or to ignore one cued color of three colored random-dot kinematograms (RDKs) that evoked distinct stimulus-driven steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) through flickering. Along with SSVEPs, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral performance for to-be-attended/-ignored events of the detection task, that participants performed in the RDKs as instructed by the cue.

Unexpectedly, SSVEPs showed a rapid facilitation of the cue color even when that color was instructed to be ignored, followed by a delayed suppression of the non-cued color. A selection negativity (an index of feature-based attentional processing) emerged rapidly after instructing “to attend”, but it was delayed when the instruction was “to ignore”. Moreover, reactions were slowed after instructing “to ignore”, compared with “to attend”.

Thus, instructing “to ignore” does not accelerate suppression. Rather, the top-down-driven, bi-phasic dynamic of facilitation and suppression appears to be modulated transiently by cue color, leading to performance costs when the cued color is to be ignored.

The high relapse rate among smokers (~75% within the first 6 months) highlights the need to improve smoking cessation programs for individuals with tobacco use disorder (TUD). This project aims to enhance conventional cessation strategies by targeting cognitive control through two complementary interventions: chess-based cognitive remediation training (CB-CRT) and high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Sleep, a critical factor in memory consolidation and cognitive function, plays a role in both smoking behavior and cessation. Our previous research demonstrated that strengthening cognitive control is associated with higher treatment success.

In this study, we present preliminary data on sleep patterns, CB-CRT, and HIIT, exploring their potential roles in cognitive control and smoking cessation, as well as their effectiveness as treatment interventions in terms of motivation, adherence, and cognitive performance. Initial analyses indicate variability in sleep architecture among participants with TUD, with notable differences in NonREM sleep duration and quality. We also examine adherence and engagement in CB-CRT and HIIT, investigating correlations with smoking cessation motivation. Sleep EEG data will assess whether sleep-dependent consolidation enhances cognitive improvements from CB-CRT. Additionally, actigraphy and heart rate monitoring will explore HIIT’s impact on sleep quality. Neural correlates of cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex will be evaluated using fMRI.

Given the high prevalence of sleep disturbances in individuals with TUD (n=132), we hypothesize that optimizing sleep quality will enhance cognitive function and strengthen CB-CRT’s effects, improving abstinence rates. The integration of sleep optimization and cognitive training may lead to improved outcomes in smoking cessation.

Social exclusion threatens fundamental human needs and may alter unfairness processing. This study investigates how social exclusion affects neural responses to fair and unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game using EEG. Participants play Cyberball (inclusion/exclusion), followed by an Ultimatum Game with the same players. We simulate two distinct proposer types: predominantly fair (mostly 50/50 splits) versus predominantly unfair (mostly 90/10 splits). We examine FRN and P300 components during offer evaluation, focusing on the critical three-way interaction between offer fairness, prior social context (inclusion/exclusion), and proposer characteristic (fair/unfair). We predict that while unfair offers generally elicit larger amplitudes, this effect will be modulated by both the participant's exclusion experience and the proposer's fairness history. Specifically, the amplitude difference between fair and unfair offers should be largest when the offers violate expectations based on both prior social context and proposer's behavioral history. Behaviorally, we expect rejection rates will follow similar interaction patterns. Additionally, we examine how victim sensitivity moderates these complex relationships. This novel approach integrates cognitive neuroscience with personality psychology, investigating how individual differences are manifested in neural processing at the intersection of social exclusion, unfairness evaluation, and person perception.

Empathy—the ability to understand and share others’ feelings—is a limited and costly resource. Previous studies have investigated how individuals form empathy towards the suffering of one specific person. However, oftentimes people are confronted with the suffering of several individuals at the same time. Leveraging reinforcement learning (RL), here we aim to investigate whether and how empathy for the pain of a person changes in the presence of other suffering individuals.

In the first part of the study, participants are presented with faces showing painful or neutral expressions. The pain probabilities of one face (target face) are fixed, while the pain probabilities of a second face vary across blocks, i.e., are either equal (equal pain condition), lower (lower pain condition) or higher (higher pain condition). In the second part, they are asked to indicate which of the painful faces they would help first.

Simulation data (N = 50) from a context-dependent RL model indicated a main effect of block on the mean ratings of the target face. Post-hoc analysis showed emotion ratings in the lower pain condition were lower (i.e., feeling worse) than in both equal pain condition (p = 0.03) and higher pain condition (p < 0.001). Emotion ratings in the equal pain were lower than in the higher pain condition (p < 0.001). Empirical findings will test these simulation results. This study will provide insights into how empathy is learned and dynamically changed when facing several suffering individuals, with potential implications for mental health and social decision-making.

People differ considerably in their sensitivity to rewarding, or punishing, outcomes of their actions. It is suggested that intra- and inter-individual variations in dopaminergic capacity may account for those differences. Dopamine-agonistic effects of estradiol may further modulate such variations. While rodent models show a fairly congruent picture of this dopamine-agonistic effect of estradiol that appears to increase reward sensitivity, findings from pharmacological intervention studies in humans, and similarly those from studies examining peripheral, circulating estradiol over the menstrual cycle, are less consistent. The comparison of reward sensitivity between follicular and the progesterone-confounded luteal phase, as well as small samples sizes which, in combination with potential selections mechanisms, can bias the effects may partly explain those inconsistencies. Furthermore, the valence of positive and negative prediction errors is often not assumed in simpler reinforcement learning tasks, despite evidence that those are encoded differently. We propose to conduct a large-scale online study to assess the contribution of rising estradiol levels over the follicular phase on a probabilistic reinforcement learning task sensitive to the valence of prediction errors. We predict that the high-estradiol late follicular (LF) phase, compared to the low-estradiol early follicular (EF) phase, increases participant’s reward sensitivity. Moreover, we expect the LF, compared to the EF, phase to increase the learning rate for both positive and negative prediction errors. At PuG 2025, an interim analysis will be presented. Our study aims to contribute to a more refined understanding of the involvement of estradiol in human cognition.

Protecting others from harm is critical for societal well-being but is often effortful. How individuals weigh the costs of exerting effort against the benefits of avoiding harm to others is currently unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated how individuals (N = 50) decide to exert physical effort to reduce the number of painful shocks delivered to themselves and to another person. Results showed that individuals are similarly motivated to incur effort costs to reduce their pain and the pain of another person (null findings supported by Bayesian statistics). Specifically, we found no credible evidence that participants’ willingness to put in effort and the actual force they exerted to reduce pain differed when helping the other person versus helping themselves. Further, using computational modeling we showed little credible evidence of a difference in discounting of pain reduction by effort between self- and other-related choices. These results contrast with prior research indicating that individuals are less motivated to exert effort to gain (or avoid losing) monetary rewards for others than for themselves and demonstrate that protecting others from harm shifts individuals’ effortful behavior from prosocially apathetic to prosocially motivated. Our findings shed light on the motivational processes underlying interpersonal harm avoidance and effortful prosocial behavior and highlight the importance of the type of benefit at stake for motivating prosociality.

Drug cue reactivity (DCR) is the most widely used fMRI paradigm for studying substance use disorders (SUDs) yet linking it to behaviour remains inconsistent due to methodological and clinical heterogeneity.

In this systematic review and activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of 98 studies, we examined how design-related factors (fMRI design, control condition valence, stimulus matching for action/tool-related content) and clinical factors (treatment compliance, drug use severity) influence neural DCR. Beyond identifying the main effect of DCR and its meta-analytic connectivity, we conducted contrast analyses of ALE-derived maps and fitted penalized logistic regression models to assess whether specific factor levels and their interactions associate with the likelihood of replication in certain DCR-related brain regions.

Results revealed that bilateral temporo-occipital regions and fusiform gyri were more frequently involved when action/tool content was insufficiently matched between drug and control conditions. The superior parietal lobule was more commonly associated with treatment compliance. Regarding drug use severity, a left amygdala cluster was more likely observed in severe drug users. Additionally, severity was associated with reduced engagement of the medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, key regions of the anterior default mode network. However, this decline depended on treatment compliance, with the strongest reduction in replicability observed in severe users who were also treatment compliant.

We conclude that DCR is considerably influenced by visual confounds and, in clinical terms, appears particularly sensitive to processes related to drug ‘liking’ and drug devaluation. Implications for translational psychiatry and brain-behaviour relationships linking DCR to SUD pathology are discussed.

Stress has increasingly been recognized as a significant psychological concern that is aggravated by urbanization and associated urban gray space exposure. Consequently, urban green spaces have been proposed as beneficial for stress restoration and mental health. However, the impact exposure to urban green vs. gray space in real-world urban environments on subjective and physiological stress responses remains underexplored. To address this gap, the present study employed an ambulatory psychophysiological assessment in a naturalistic setting to examine stress responses associated with exposure to urban green and gray spaces. In this pre-registered study (https://osf.io/hf4rw/) thirty-six healthy participants (N = 9 male, 18-32 years) completed an urban walking route (3.9 km, 65 min walking duration, temperature M = 30.8° degree Celsius, Range = 19°-35° degrees Celsius) on one testing day, while transitioning between urban green and gray spaces in Cologne, Germany. GPS-location and ambulatory physiological measures (cardiovascular and electrodermal activity) were continuously recorded. Additionally, ecological momentary assessments (EMA) were collected during urban mobility to assess subjective stress, positive affect and well-being. Subjective stress was lower and affective well-being was higher in urban green vs. urban gray environments. Heart rate and heart rate variability showed significant changes consistent with reduced stress during green space exposure. Ambulatory physiological measures and EMA during naturalistic navigation revealed a reduction in stress-related responses when transitioning into urban green spaces. Expanding and enhancing urban green spaces may be a promising approach to improving public health.

Work-related stress is a key risk factor for the development of mental health problems, such as burnout and depression. Low-grade inflammation, e.g., chronically elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, has been suggested as a potential mediator in this association. However, little is known about the biological mechanisms underlying persistent low-grade inflammation in response to environmental stress. In this preregistered study, we investigated the role of CRP-related methylation (CRPm) in the association between work-related stress (effort-reward imbalance) and burnout symptoms (assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey) in a cross-sectional and longitudinal design. We analyzed genome-wide methylation levels from whole blood in a subsample of the Dresden Burnout Study (DBS, n=300) at baseline and follow-up (one year later). Drawing on a large-scale epigenome-wide association study on blood CRP levels, we calculated CRPm scores that explained 25.6% of the variance in circulating CRP levels in our sample. While work-related stress at baseline was a highly significant predictor for burnout and depressive symptoms, we did not observe a mediating effect of CRPm in this association, neither cross-sectionally nor longitudinally. Contrary to our hypotheses, work-related stress did not predict CRPm scores. Likewise, no robust associations were found between CRPm scores and burnout or depressive symptoms. In conclusion, data from the DBS do not suggest a mediating role of CRPm scores in the association of work-related stress and burnout. Further research is needed to aid our understanding of molecular mechanisms that contribute to stress-induced low-grade inflammation and related mental health outcomes.

Recent research highlights the role of an altered gut-microbiome in both obesity and depression. However, despite their frequent co-occurrence of up to 30%, the gut microbiome in comorbid depression and obesity has not yet been systematically examined. Here, we present findings from a secondary analysis of over 1,000 participants of the American Gut Project. Gut-microbial diversity was significantly lower in both obesity and depression, while these changes were even more pronounced in comorbid individuals, associated with an unhealthy lifestyle. This pathophysiological overlap suggests a potential role for the gut-microbiome in the development and maintenance of this comorbidity. Based on these findings, we introduce the study protocol of a complementary prospective, naturalistic study in hospitalized psychiatric patients. This study aims to disentangle the supposed heterogeneity in the etiology of depression with and without comorbid obesity. Employing a rigorous multi-method approach, we systematically assess gut- and oral-microbiome composition, brain-active metabolites, vagus-nerve activity, diet and other lifestyle factors, medications, severity of typical and atypical depressive symptoms, and clinical history to generate individual, holistic patient profiles. Key innovations of our study include a focus on comorbidity, a systemic perspective, recruitment of hospitalized psychiatric patients, and state-of-the-art microbiome quantification through multiple sampling. Our findings may provide novel insights into the role of the gut-brain axis in depression, paving the way for more personalized interventions. By identifying relevant systemic biomarkers and individual patient profiles, our study could help to establish diagnostic criteria to determine which patients may benefit from complementary therapeutic approaches targeting the gut-brain axis.

Our daily lives require us to constantly attend to, select and process relevant information from multiple sensory streams, such as listening to an audiobook while driving in traffic. Oscillatory activity in specific frequency bands determines stimulus-driven bottom-up and top-down processing. Recently, aperiodic measures and pupillary oscillations have also been linked to top-down and bottom-up auditory processing at different complexities. However, very few neurophysiological studies have investigated the processing of naturalistic stimuli such as emotional speech in dynamic scenarios. Moreover, no study has yet integrated neural and pupillary correlates. Using whole-head magnetoencephalography and eye-tracking (N = 48), we examined how emotional speech and visuo-spatial workload co-modulate neural and pupillary activity during simulated driving. We hypothesised an increase in periodic alpha and beta band power, aperiodic measures (broadband, slope and offset), and the index of pupillary activity (IPA) during emotional compared to neutral speech (internal mode). Periodic gamma oscillations were expected to decrease in parietal areas related to spatial processing. Conversely, for high compared to low visuo-spatial workload drives, we hypothesised increased gamma and theta band power along with pupil dilation (external mode). Main effects of emotional speech and workload in the spatial permutation-based clustering of MEG source power and correlational analyses supported the hypotheses regarding co-modulations and two processing modes. While internalised processing for emotional speech is likely associated with anticipatory listening, social cognition, and emotional appraisal, the increased external mode under high visuo-spatial workload reflects cognitive strain and the allocation of cognitive resources to meet heightened driving demands.

Music is a ubiquitous and fundamental mode of human expression. However, research on behavioral and neural aspects of music processing has focused on traditional Western music, with music from other musical cultures and traditions receiving less attention. Here, we used an fMRI listening task to bilaterally chart the representational space of music in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the human brain’s primary auditory region, in 41 young adults with medium to high levels of musical expertise. The neural activation patterns elicited during listening to the different musical pieces fell into two distinct clusters based on their correlation distance in a representational similarity analysis. The first cluster encompassed all Western classical compositions, while the second cluster comprised contemporary and non-Western pieces. To better understand the musical dimensions that contributed to the clustering, we searched for acoustic features that differ between clusters, using measures from the field of Music Information Retrieval. A significant difference between the two clusters was found for the timbral feature of perceived fullness, with pieces belonging to the second cluster demonstrating a significantly fuller global timbre than those belonging to the first. The present results need to be interpreted with caution because each musical tradition or culture was represented by one piece only. With this caveat in mind, we tentatively conclude that perceived timbral fullness may help to explain differences in activation patterns in the STG that map onto differences and commonalities between musical traditions and cultures.

Across the lifespan, interindividual differences in cognitive-training benefits are substantial. In adults, benefits tend to be positively associated with brain-network modularity at baseline. In modular networks, brain regions are more strongly connected to regions within the same functional network than to regions outside of the network. However, it is not known whether a similar positive association between baseline network modularity and training benefits is present among children, whose network organization has not yet fully matured. We explored the association of individual differences in brain-network modularity and training-related performance improvements in children aged 8 to 11 years who completed nine weeks of either high-intensity task-switching training (n = 32) or high-intensity single-task training (n = 30). With training, task accuracy increased and response times decreased, especially in the high-intensity task-switching group. Training-related response-time decreases were greater in children who showed higher modularity at baseline. However, these decreases were not associated with changes in modularity during training. Higher baseline modularity was also associated with higher overall accuracy but did not predict training-related accuracy improvements. Furthermore, accuracy initially increased and returned to baseline towards the end of training among children with unchanging or decreasing modularity. We conclude that higher baseline modularity of functional brain networks in children might support training-related response time improvements and more stable levels of accuracy. The relationship between network modularity and training-related performance changes appears to be complex, potentially reflecting the continuing development of functional brain networks that are not fully captured by measures of network modularity.

Circadian rhythms are a governing principle of many biological processes, however their impact on neuroimaging biomarkers remains underexplored. Diffusion-weighted MRI (dwMRI) is sensitive to changes in tissue microstructure and specifically mean diffusivity (MD) has been shown to reflect plasticity-related processes after learning. Here, we aimed to assess the circadian rhythmicity of brain diffusivity.

In study 1, dwMRI of healthy volunteers was acquired at three different time points (0 h, 3 h and 13 h), with the first scan at ~8am (wake group, n=18) or at ~8pm (sleep group, n=17). Gray and white matter MD was lower in the evening than in the morning. Correspondingly, there was a significant negative correlation between MD and time spent awake. The wake group showed a linear decrease in overall MD over the three time points. The sleep group’s MD pattern showed a significant quadratic trend, with a decrease in MD in the evening and an increase over sleep. Study 2 is designed to gain a better understanding of dwMRI confounding sources, probing dwMRI at 5 time points across 24 h adjusted for individual chronotype (n=40)and including physiological and behavioral variables with known circadian oscillation (salivary cortisol, body temperature, blood pressure, psychomotor vigilance).

Preliminary results replicate the significant decrease in MD with prolonged wakefulness and increase across sleep and extend it to other indices derived from multi-shell dwMRI. In conclusion, our data identify circadian oscillations as a major confounding source for repeated dwMRI measurements and contribute to improving the sensitivity of dwMRI for engram investigation.

Personality plays a crucial role in moral decision-making, particularly in lawmaking and ethical judgments. Moral beliefs, as described by the Moral Foundations Theory, and cultural background further shape how individuals evaluate moral dilemmas. However, the reasoning behind psychopathic morality remains unclear, raising the question of whether it represents an universal abnormality in decision-making or varies across cultural contexts.

This study, currently involving over 200 participants, examined how psychopathic traits (SRP-IV), moral beliefs (MFQ), and cultural background interact in moral decision-making. The CNI-model is applied to differentiate between sensitivity to consequences, norms, and action aversion. To refine this approach, we employed the CAN algorithm, which, unlike the multiTree method of the original CNI model, incorporates parallel rather than sequential processing. This allows for a more precise differentiation of decision tendencies, individual-level data analysis, and the consideration of atypical response patterns, improving our ability to link behavioural variables with personality traits, moral beliefs, and cultural influences.

Cultural background is examined as a moderating variable, as previous research suggests moral foundations differ across cultures (e.g. individualistic cultures emphasise Harm and Fairness, while collectivistic cultures prioritise Loyalty and Authority). These differences may influence how psychopathic traits affect moral reasoning. Results replicate previous findings using CNI and show relations to psychopathy and moral beliefs.

By integrating personality, culture, and moral cognition with advanced modelling techniques, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of psychopathic morality. Future research will expand on these findings by incorporating psychophysiological measurements to further explore the mechanisms underlying moral decision-making.

Humans rely on multisensory integration to navigate the world. For example, our brain integrates audiovisual spatial signals to locate objects if it infers that the signals arise from a common cause. The brain performs multisensory causal inference based on the multisensory signals’ spatial and temporal disparity. Attention modulates multisensory integration, yet its specific role in multisensory causal inference remains unclear. In a psychophysical study (n=25), we addressed this gap by investigating how spatial exogenous and endogenous attention and attentional load interact with temporal disparity to influence causal inference.

Participants completed a causal judgment task in which they had to determine whether audiovisual stimuli presented with varying temporal disparities originated from a common source or not. To examine the influence of different attentional processes, we manipulated exogenous and endogenous spatial attention in addition to attentional load.

Our results demonstrated that temporal disparity significantly influenced causal judgments, with greater disparities reducing the likelihood of perceiving a common cause of audio-visual stimuli. Exogenous attention significantly enhanced the effect of temporal disparity, amplifying the reduction in common cause judgments for higher disparities. Endogenous attention generally increased the likelihood of common cause judgments, while a higher attentional load decreased this likelihood.

Our findings highlight the distinct influences of exogenous and endogenous attention as well as the attentional load on causal inference in multisensory perception. They demonstrate that explicit causal inference is not independent of attention but attentional processes modulate general causal perception and the processing of temporal disparity for causal inference.

Studies on the effect of stress on empathy imply that stress either decreases affective self-other distinction (SOD) or increases self-saliency (SES). SOD refers to the ability to differentiate between one’s own emotional state and one’s empathic response to another person’s emotional state. SES refers to the tendency to prioritize information concerning oneself over information concerning others. In order to measure SOD, we developed the Food Emotional Egocentricity Bias paradigm (FEEB), where participants have to switch trial-by-trial between rating their own or another person’s emotional response to food stimuli. Since SOD is challenged in incongruent trials (own emotional response ≠ other person’s emotional response), we can assess SOD by comparing incongruent trials with congruent trials (own emotional response = other person’s emotional response). The FEEB also allows us to quantify SES by comparing trials, in which participants rate their own emotional response, with trials, in which they rate the other’s emotion. To test whether stress affects SOD and SES differently, we are currently running a behavioural study where we assess the participants’ SOD and SES before and after inducing stress via the Trier Social Stress Test. We expect that stress decreases SOD and increases SES. To test our hypothesis, we plan to compute mixed effects models with repeated measurements. We plan to compute a model that considers differing effects of stress on SOD and SES to clarify if and how stress affects SOD and SES.

A typical recognition memory paradigm includes an initial encoding stage and a separate recognition phase. Using this paradigm, numerous studies have identified memory-related ERP components, including the subsequent-memory effect (SME) during encoding, and old/new effects during recognition. An alternative approach is the continuous recognition task, wherein participants view a continuous stream of items and must simultaneously encode each item and indicate whether it is old or new. This task mirrors many real-life situations where encoding and remembering are typically interwoven within each event. Memory-related ERP effects in continuous recognition tasks remain relatively unexplored, especially regarding two critical parameters of this paradigm: how often an item is repeated and the lag between repetitions. We investigated the SME and old/new effects using a continuous recognition task with scene images that repeated once or twice after intervals of 10, 16, 24, 38, or 60 intervening images (lags). EEG data were recorded from 31 participants. Both the frontal FN400 and the parietal LPE components increased with the number of stimulus repetitions as compared to initial presentation. Moreover, for repeated images, amplitudes decreased linearly with increasing lag, paralleling a decline in behavioral performance. Finally, the SME was strongest for images later remembered at both repetitions, as compared to those remembered once, which did not significantly differ from images not remembered at all. Utilizing the continuous recognition task, we replicate previous findings regarding ERP responses related to stimulus repetition and extend these findings by revealing differential effects of lag and SME for repeated stimuli.

Migraine is characterised by recurrent episodes of headache often associated with nausea, vomiting, photophobia, and phonophobia. Despite many efforts, up to now, there are no specific biomarkers for migraine.

One potential biomarker that has received more attention in the last years is the aperiodic exponent of the electroencephalogram (EEG) power spectrum. It is related to the inhibition-excitation ratio and represents the steepness of the aperiodic activity in the power spectrum. A lower exponent signifies a shift towards increased excitatory activity, whereas a higher exponent represents a shift towards increased inhibitory activity. As people with migraine have increased glutamatergic activity interictally in the occipital lobe, we hypothesise that the migraine brain is characterised by a lower aperiodic exponent compared to healthy controls.

Increases or decreases in power in specific frequency bands have been found in people with migraine compared to healthy controls with incoherent results. The most consistent finding was an interictal increase in theta power. Changes in the aperiodic activity (offset and slope) can simulate changes in the periodic activity (e.g. power of frequencies). Therefore, we would like to investigate whether the increase in theta power is based on a real change in periodic activity or whether it is confounded by aperiodic activity.

Both research questions will be investigated in an EEG experiment involving 10 minutes of resting state (5 minutes with eyes closed and 5 minutes with eyes open). A total sample size of 102 participants (51 people with migraine and 51 healthy controls) is planned.

Attention-based strategies such as sensory focus and distraction have been shown to be effective in pain management. Sensory focus typically replaces worrying about pain with more exact perception of pain characteristics while distraction diverts the processing focus from the pain event. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of these techniques on experimental cold pain (CPT) in a cross-over design. Seventy-nine participants (age = 29.7 years, 73% women, 68% students) underwent five CPTs across two study days: 2 reference measurements and 3 conditions (passive control; sensory focus using the Mindful-interoceptive exposure task, MIET; distraction using the Letter counting task). The sample was randomly assigned to one of two fixed sequences. Fear of pain and catastrophizing were additionally assessed. Both tasks significantly increased cold pain tolerance and decreased aversiveness compared to the control condition while distraction was also related to decreased pain intensity. Contrarily, increased intensity ratings were more than twice as likely to occur in the MIET compared to distraction. Task-related changes in pain tolerance, intensity or aversiveness were not related to catastrophizing or fear of pain. The study confirms both sensory focus and attentional distraction strategies to be effective for pain endurances, even in a cross-over design. However, if the sensory aspects of pain are focused upon, these may be assessed more precisely and, as in this study, may also be perceived as more intense despite improvements in tolerance.

Imagine reading a shopping list: words such as apple, banana, and pear immediately create a strong sense of coherence, forming a predictive semantic context so that when the word orange appears, it is readily integrated. In contrast, when the list begins with apple followed by orange, the prediction is weaker despite the identical semantic relatedness between the words. This raises the question: How does local semantic predictability influence the processing of upcoming words, and how do neural responses reflect this? In this EEG study, 31 participants performed a lexical decision task on related/unrelated targets (real or pseudowords) preceded by either one (short condition) or three semantically related primes (long condition). Consistent with prior findings (Lau et al., 2013), our results revealed a more negative N400 amplitude for unrelated targets in the long condition, whereas no difference between related vs. unrelated targets was observed in the short condition. Moreover, the N400 effect in the long condition had an earlier onset (around 200 ms), indicating that prediction altered its temporal profile. Finally, we observed a negative correlation between working memory scores and the N400 difference, with higher scores linked to a larger difference, suggesting that working memory aids semantic processing and prediction in individuals. Although stronger and earlier N400 modulation in the long‐prime condition may support a top‐down prediction mechanism, these findings remain compatible with the broader literature on cumulative priming and may reflect an interplay between predictive coding and incremental spreading activation.

Pain perception in individuals engaging in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) differs from those without NSSI experience, especially regarding pain thresholds and tolerance. NSSI may also systematically affect pain coping and processing styles but research on this topic is missing. The current study investigates pain perception and cognitive pain processing styles in repetitive NSSI while considering concurrent chronic pain. Thermal sensory detection and pain thresholds were assessed with a quantitative sensory testing procedure using Medoc TSA-Air-II in 47 individuals with more than 5 NSSI events (87% female, age M=23.1) and 50 individuals without NSSI experience (88% female, age M=24.2). Additionally, self-reported pain coping strategies and pain status were assessed. Individuals with NSSI showed significantly higher thresholds for hot and cold pain which were not related to duration, intensity or time since the last NSSI event. Regarding pain coping strategies, NSSI was significantly related to less diversion from pain, hope or praying, and engagement in pain-reducing behaviors. Chronic pain was related to more pain openness, ignoring pain sensations and pain-reducing behaviors. Pain catastrophizing was strong in both NSSI and chronic pain. In sum, NSSI is not only associated with higher pain thresholds but also with more maladaptive pain processing styles and less coping behaviors, which is inversed for individuals with chronic pain. More frequent pain in general may be relevant for pain catastrophic thoughts. Our findings highlight the need for a differentiated examination of different pain experiences and their combinations on cognitive coping of pain to strengthen adaptive cognitive regulatory strategies.

The neuropeptide Orexin (Hypocretin) plays a central role in regulating homeostatic functions, particularly the sleep-wake cycle by promoting wakefulness and arousal. Orexin’s role in human cognition is less well understood. Here, we used Daridorexant to test for the effects of blocking OX A and B receptors on human cognition. Both receptors are expressed in medial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus.

Therefore, we used a modified Simon task to probe modulations of prefrontal cognitive control functions and the Mnemonic Discrimination Task (MDT) for identification of effects on hippocampus-dependent learning. In a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled procedure thirty healthy young participants completed both tasks twice, with sessions spaced one week apart.

We found an overall increase of sleepiness self-ratings after participants received the verum compared to placebo. Accordingly, response times and missed responses in the modified Simon task were increased after Daridorexant intake. However, we found no effect on accuracy, the Simon effect or post error response time adjustments between conditions, indicating that executive control was preserved. On the other hand, participants showed comparable response times but significantly lower corrected hit rates in the MDT for Daridorexant versus placebo, demonstrating an impaired ability for pattern separation.

Taken together, these experiments underscore Orexin’s role in general alertness, particularly in vigilant performance within the constraints of a time limit. We also show first evidence that hippocampal functioning in humans may be directly regulated by Orexin.

Threat avoidance demands affective control, particularly when threat is imminent versus distant, and when threat encounters turn out worse (negative prediction error, PE-) or better than expected (positive prediction error, PE+). While PE+ have been associated with the Reward Positivity (Rew-P) in monetary reward learning, it is unknown how the Rew-P is modulated by threat imminence as well as state and trait fear and neuroticism/anxiety. We assessed electrocortical feedback processing of 73 participants during two reversal learning tasks. In one task, negative feedback signalled immediate threat (one loud noise burst) and in another task negative feedback indicated delayed threat (accumulated noise bursts). The colour of the inter-trial fixation cross informed how close participants were to the end of each learning block. Trait and state fear and neuroticism/anxiety were assessed via self-report ratings and questionnaires. Single-trial analyses revealed an overall increase in the Rew-P response to positive feedback in the immediate versus delayed threat task, as well as a positive association with PE+ levels in both tasks. There was no support for a modulation of the Rew-P by the distance to exiting (immediate threat) or entering (delayed threat) the threat encounter. Preliminary correlation analyses of negative affective states and traits indicate that in the immediate threat task, high state fear increases the Rew-P, and individuals with high trait neuroticism/anxiety show stronger associations between PE+ levels and Rew-P amplitudes. Our study shows that the Rew-P, indexing PE+ processing, is sensitive to threat imminence and modulated by negative affective states and traits.

This study explores how people learn to make decisions based on rewards when choosing between objects with different visual features. We aim to understand if people employ strategic thinking (model-based learning) in conjunction with habit-based learning (model-free learning) when facing new situations, and how people mentally organize information about objects with multiple characteristics.

In our experiment, participants view pairs of custom-designed 2D objects that are biologically plausible but are unfamiliar, where each object have various smaller shapes (stars, triangles, circles, etc.) in different numbers, colors, and arrangements. The number of the various smaller shapes are directly related to the underlying reward value of each object. Through 500 trials, participants choose one object from each pair and receive feedback about the reward value of their selection. This helps us observe how they develop decision strategies over time.

To ensure the task remains manageable, we carefully limit object complexity to six features with up to eight variations each. Our study includes 119 participants aged 18-35, a sample size determined through statistical power analysis to reliably detect even modest effects in decision-making patterns.

We hypothesize that people use both strategic and habit-based thinking when learning, with strategic approaches being particularly valuable for new situations. Moreover, we predict that people update their strategic approaches as they observe objects with varying sub-features, such as number of distinct shapes. In the poster presentation, I'll share preliminary results from our ongoing data collection, offering initial insights into how the complex information is processed to make reward-based decisions.

Frontal Asymmetry as a feature of resting state electroencephalography (EEG) has been discussed as a correlate of a stable personality trait for over 30 years. Associated traits include constructs of approach and withdrawal motivation, as well as behavioural activation and inhibition. This framework of associated traits has since been expanded to describe a structure of latent traits which are superimposed by state-dependent fluctuations. To calculate a model of latent traits and states at least two occasions of measurement are required, which have previously been separated by several weeks. The goal of this study was to explore the latent state-trait structure of frontal asymmetry measures derived from three occasions of measurement on the same day. A latent trait derived from the models was further investigated regarding whether it could be associated with trait sensitivity of the Behavioural Activation System (BAS) as measured through different questionnaires. Variations of latent-trait and latent-state-trait models, some including method-factors were analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM) regarding their fit to the data. While a latent state-trait model including method-factors for two resting conditions of opened- or closed-eyes was found to provide the relative best fit to the data, absolute fit-indices did not indicate adequate model fit for any of the investigated models. The latent trait influencing frontal asymmetry as postulated by the investigated models did not show significant correlations with trait-BAS sensitivity as derived from questionnaires.

Temporal contiguity between conditioned (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (US) is a crucial factor in Pavlovian learning, yet little is known about its role in appetitive conditioning and extinction. In a within-subject design, 60 participants underwent both a delay (DC) and trace conditioning (TC) session with partial reinforcement (75%) by monetary rewards (US) and varying interval between CS offset and US onset (DC: 0s; TC: 4s). In addition to self-report indices (reward expectancy, arousal, valence), psychophysiological markers (pupil dilation, heart-period and startle reflex modulation) were recorded during acquisition and extinction training. For all measures, significant differential conditioned responses emerged, irrespective of temporal contiguity, with no major differences observed between TC and DC during acquisition (except for diminished startle attenuation in TC). Despite overall similar patterns in conditioned responding, there was no intraindividual concordance (Spearman correlations) between sessions across measures. By contrast, effects on extinction learning differed markedly, with smaller reductions in differential reward expectancy, heart-period deceleration and startle modulation after extinction in TC, suggesting relatively enhanced resistance to extinction training. Conditioned pupil dilation responses remained comparatively stable. Taken together, our findings extend evidence of fundamental differences in underlying learning mechanisms between TC and DC to the context of reward learning.

Empathy is a multifaceted construct, including affective and cognitive empathy as well as empathic concern, reflected in subjective experiences, physiological responding, facial reactions and behaviour. While low empathy is one of the hall-mark descriptors of psychopathic personality, experimental studies are inconclusive, potentially due to its multifaceted nature, including Coldheartedness, Fearlessness and Impulsivity. Across a lab- and an online-study, N=195 participants watched videos of individuals talking about life events (angry, fearful, happy or sad). Participants rated their own emotional response the emotion they perceive, how much they would like to help and how close they would like to be to that person, as well as their psychopathic personality traits. Heart rate, electrodermal activity and activity of the M. zygomaticus and the M. corrugator were recorded in a part of the sample. Participants higher in Coldheartedness showed lower cognitive and affective empathy in ratings, specifically for their own affective response to sad and fearful stories. This was reflected in lower electrodermal activity during evaluation of their own emotional response to angry, and of the other person’s emotional state during sad stories. In addition, participants higher in Coldheartedness showed lower heart rate across tasks, while participants higher on Impulsivity showed higher heart rate. There were no moderating effects of psychopathic traits for facial muscle activity. These findings suggest that psychopathic traits of Colheartedness seem related to experimental reactions to sad and angry life stories. Provided replication of these results, shades of empathy and psychopathy only partially cross and vary across outcome measures.

A common approach to studying the etiology of mental disorders is Pavlovian conditioning, where an originally neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US), becoming a conditioned stimulus (CS). Yet, little is known about disgust conditioning, even though it is presumed that disgust plays a distinct role in the pathogenesis of several mental disorders, and previous research has suggested systematic differences between disgust and fear conditioning. While disgust can be attributed to individuals or objects without direct presence of a disgust-evoking stimulus itself, it remains unclear how aspects of temporal contiguity modulate the learning of disgust.

The present study compared trace (TC) and delay conditioning (DC) with aversive odors as US in a within-subject design (N= 37) to identify potential similarities and differences regarding acquisition and extinction of conditioned responses. Neutral pictures of faces were used as CS. In DC, the CS and US coterminated, while in TC, CS offset and US onset were four seconds apart. Self-report (ratings of disgust, valence, arousal and US expectancy) as well as psychophysiological measures (heart rate, respiratory frequency, skin conductance response, pupil dilation) were collected.

The results show that there were differential conditioned responses in both TC and DC conditions on various response systems, however, with small effect sizes for physiological variables. Implications of potential differential effects of TC vs. DC for research and clinical applications are discussed.