Psychophysiology

Experiencing violence changes behavior, shapes personalities, and poses a risk factor for mental disorders. This association might be mediated through epigenetic modifications that affect gene expression, such as DNA methylation. The present study investigated the impact of community and domestic violence on DNA methylation measured in saliva collected from 375 individuals including three generations: grandmothers (n = 126), mothers (n = 125), and adolescents (n = 124, 53% female). Using the Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array, in adolescents, we detected two CpG sites that showed an association of DNA methylation and lifetime exposure to community and domestic violence even after FDR correction: BDNF_cg06260077 (logFC −0.454, p = 3.71E‐07), and CLPX_cg01908660 (logFC = −0.372, p = 1.38E‐07). Differential DNA methylation of the CpG BDNF_cg06260077 associated with exposure to violence was also observed in the maternal but not the grandmaternal generation. BDNF (brain‐derived neurotrophic factor) and CLPX (caseinolytic mitochondrial matrix peptidase chaperone subunit) genes are involved in neural development. Our results thus reveal altered molecular mechanisms of developmental and intergenerational trajectories in survivors of repeated violent experiences.

Event‐related potentials were recorded from 80 participants ranging in age from 7 to 24 years while they attended selectively to stimuli with a specified color (red or blue) in an attempt to detect the occurrence of target stimuli. Color attention effects were identified as frontal selection positivity (FSP; 140–275 ms), selection negativity (SN; 150–300 ms), and N2b (200–450 ms), whereas target detection was reflected in P3b (300–700 ms). There were age‐related decreases in the latencies of FSP, N2b, and P3b that paralleled decreases in reaction time and error rates. Also, the SN amplitude increased with advancing age, whereas both N2b and P3b showed changes in scalp topography. These results represent neurophysiological evidence that the efficiency of visual selective processes increases during childhood and adolescence. Developmental growth may take place at both relatively early and late levels of visual selective information processing.

A comparison was made between classical conditioning and pseudoconditioning of heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) using low or high intensity shock as unconditioned stimuli (UCS). Conditioning treatment involved 5‐sec delayed conditioning, 32 trials/session for 5 sessions with shock administered randomly on half the trials. Pseudoconditioning was exactly the same except for pairing of CS and UCS.

In contrast to pseudoconditioning, which produced mild acceleration of HR, minimal GSR, and frequent somatic response to the CS (as defined electromyographically), conditioning treatment produced consistent deceleration of HR, larger magnitude and frequency of GSR, and minimal overt somatic response to CS. The conditioned decelerative HR response developed rapidly and persisted throughout the experiment. Such apparent conditioning phenomena may still involve sensitization‐type effects and somatic interactions.

The effects of subjects’ sets on autonomic functioning had previously been dem‐onstrated when the sets were induced by explicit experimental procedure. It washypothesized that implicit (non‐verbalized) sets should likewise have physiologicalcorrelates. The hypothesis was tested by exposing subjects of four different ethnicgroups, whose attitudes toward pain and pain expression are different, to an experi‐mental procedure involving electric shock. Differences were found in resting meanheart rate and palmar skin resistance and face temperature levels, in palmar skinpotential responses to repetitive shocks, and in correlations between thresholdsand heart rate, skin resistance and skin potential levels. These results closelyparallel the attitudinal differences, and together with previously reported findingsof differences in upper thresholds and adaptation of the diphasic skin potential, strongly confirm the hypothesis that subjects’ implicit sets infiuence their patternsof autonomic responses.

In tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, suprasegmental tones are used to signal word meaning besides consonants and vowels. To reveal memory traces for tonal language words, we presented native Mandarin Chinese speakers with a sequence of spoken syllables as standards and disyllables as deviants in a passive oddball paradigm. The second syllable of each disyllable carried critical tonal information that would define the disyllable either as a meaningful word or as a meaningless pseudoword. The words and pseudowords were acoustically and phonologically matched as well as counterbalanced. The auditory event‐related potential in response to words was more negatively deflected than that in response to pseudowords. This effect was most prominent 164 ms after the word recognition point. Our study indicates an activation of memory traces for tonal language words.

In this study, we examined cognitive function during experimental pain induced by an ischemic upper‐arm tourniquet. During pain and control conditions, individuals performed a memory search task and an oddball task. Reaction time, errors, and event‐related potentials in response to task stimuli were evaluated. Pain reduced accuracy and changed the response‐type dependency of errors and the reaction time within the memory search task: false rejections but not false acceptances increased, and rejections were faster than acceptances during pain, whereas the opposite occurred during control conditions. The memory probes elicited an N275 that increased and a P300 that decreased in amplitude during pain. Pain also reduced amplitudes of P200 and P300 from the oddball task. N275 enhancement was greater in nonaffected than affected individuals, suggesting its association with focused attention that inhibited disruption by pain. P300 attenuation is interpreted as an indication that cognitive involvement in pain diminishes the attention resources allocated to a concurrent cognitive task.

A theory of emotional imagery is described which conceives the image in the brain to be a conceptual network, controlling specific somatovisceral patterns, and constituting a prototype for overt behavioral expression. Evidence for the hypothesis that differentiated efferent activity is associated with type and content of imaginal activity is considered. Recent work in cognitive psychology is described, which treats both the generation of sensory imagery and text comprehension and storage as examples of the processing of propositional information. A similar propositional analysis is applied to emotional imagery as it is employed in the therapeutic context. Experiments prompted by this view show that the conceptual structure of the image and its associated efferent outflow can be modified directly through instructions and through shaping of reports of image experience. The implications of the theory for psychopathology are considered, as well as its relevance to therapeutic behavior change.

Visual event‐related potentials were measured for peripheral target stimuli that were preceded by a peripheral square. Targets appeared either at the same location as the square or in the opposite visual hemifield. In Experiment 1, 75% of the trials were same‐location trials, and in Experiment 2, same‐ and opposite‐location trials were equiprobable. The subject's overt response was dependent either on the identity or on the location of the target. In both experiments, opposite‐location targets elicited an enhanced PI at posterior electrodes ipsilateral to the position of the letter. This enhancement may be due to a sensory inhibition of same‐location targets. Same‐location targets elicited an enhanced negativity between 130 and 300 ms, with a first peak located parietally and a second peak broadly distributed over midline electrodes. This effect was larger in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2 and is interpreted as enhanced processing of same‐location targets due to an attentional orienting process elicited by the peripheral square.

Mental functions are influenced by states of physiological arousal. Afferent neural activity from arterial baroreceptors at systole conveys the strength and timing of individual heartbeats to the brain. We presented words under limited attentional resources time‐locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle, to test a hypothesis that natural baroreceptor stimulation influences detection and subsequent memory of words. We show memory for words presented around systole was decreased relative to words at diastole. The deleterious memory effect of systole was greater for words detected with low confidence and amplified in individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, as indexed using a heartbeat counting task. Our observations highlight an important cardiovascular channel through which autonomic arousal impacts a cognitive function, an effect mitigated by metacognition (perceptual confidence) and interoceptive sensitivity.