Abstracts symposium postersExperimental Psychopathology & Affective Neuroscience prof.dr. Karin RoelofsHomeResearchPeopleIn the mediaPublicationsLinksContactSymposiumFor participantsAnne van Leeuwen Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University Processing speaker affect during spoken sentence comprehension We often smile (and frown) while we talk. Speakers use facial expression, posture and prosody to provide additional cues that signal speaker stance. Speaker stance refers to the affective attitude of the speaker to the information he (or she) is providing, i.e., how the speaker feels about the situation or event he describes. For example, it greatly matters if “we’re having a baby” is said with a smile or with a frown. In order to respond in an adequate way, listeners must therefore somehow weave both what is said and how it is said into a single coherent interpretation. In the current study we use event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate when and how listeners integrate phonetic cues to speaker stance with the unfolding sentence meaning, and the associated unfolding situation model. Do listeners pick up on these subtle phonetic cues to speaker stance at all? And if they do, can we find evidence that listeners are rapidly relating these phonetic speaker stance cues to a more sophisticated situation-model representation of what is being said, instead of relying on simple, word-based associations (e.g., a happy sounding voice matching ‘award’). We explored this by presenting phonetically and semantically manipulated spoken Dutch sentences to listeners while collecting neural (ERP) measurements. The target materials consisted of utterances that contained a positive or negative content word. Utterances were phonetically manipulated using Praat’s LPC analysis and resynthesis to obtain a smiling and a frowning version of each utterance. We also varied the perspective of the sentence. The subject of the sentence was either first person singular – thus referring to the speaker -, or in third person singular – thus referring to someone else. This resulted in valence-matching realizations (positive – smiling, negative – frowning), or valence-mismatching realizations (negative – smiling, positive – frowning), either in first or in third person perspective. An example of a mismatching first person item would be ‘Ik heb een prijs gekregen’ (‘I have got a prize’) spoken with a frown. In general, we predict that listeners pick up on the audible cues to speaker stance. These cues should lead listeners to expect something of corresponding valence. When the speaker talks about himself, we predict to see a clear mismatch effect for mismatching words because both perceived expression and sentence-level meaning convey affective information about the speaker. For utterances referring to someone other than the speaker, no such clear mismatch effect will be observed, at least not with the same magnitude or direction. In these sentences a smiling expression should not typically lead listeners to expect something of positive valence because the speaker is not the subject of the event he describes. It depends on how the speaker feels about the whole event he is talking about, including the person he is referring to. Valence-mismatching words in speaker-centered sentences elicited a reliable positivity at about 600-900ms after critical word onset. When the event referred to someone else, valence-mismatching words elicited a reliable negativity at about 500-900ms after critical word onset. These results reveal that listeners can immediately detect if speaker-stance cues, supplied by frowning or smiling phonetics, match or mismatch the typical valence of the unfolding sentence. Furthermore, the results of the third person sentences reveal that listeners are rapidly relating these phonetic speaker stance cues to a more sophisticated situation-model representation of what is being said, instead of relying on simple associations. Thus, listeners rapidly integrate affective linguistic and affective paralinguistic cues into a sophisticated situation model (involving speaker, described event, and listener), which is presumably involved in subsequent responses. (1) Quené, H., Semin, G. R., & Foroni, F. (2012). Audible smiles and frowns affect speech comprehension. Speech Communication. (2) Ohala, J. J. 1980. The acoustic origin of the smile. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 68.S33. Bianca G. van den Bulk 1 Curium-LUMC, Leiden University Medical Center; 2 Institute of Psychology, Brain and Development Lab, Leiden University; 3 Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Emotional face processing in adolescents with clinical anxiety and depression. Can anxiety and/or depressive symptoms predict amygdala activation? Anxiety and depression are two of the most common disorder groups diagnosed during adolescence and it is known that co-morbidity between these disorders is high. Due to high prevalence rates and the impact on adolescents’ daily life, it is important to investigate the neurological underpinnings of these disorders. Previous research showed that the amygdala is an important brain area in anxiety/depression, though not much is known about the unique contribution of anxiety/depression to brain activation patterns. In the current study we examined the neurological underpinnings of anxiety/depression and the unique contribution of anxious/depressive symptoms to amygdala activation. We included 25 clinical adolescents with anxiety and/or depressive disorders (Mean age(SD)=15.44(1.53)) and 26 healthy adolescents (Mean age(SD)=14.65(1.55)). During a MRI scan session they performed an emotional face processing task in which different questions were posed (e.g. How afraid are you?) about the presented emotional faces (fearful, happy, neutral). Whole brain results showed effectiveness of the task: presentation of emotional faces resulted in activation in, among others, bilateral amygdala, bilateral insula and bilateral PFC. Furthermore, we found strong positive correlations between right amygdala activation and levels of self-reported anxiety within the clinical group. Regression analyses confirmed that levels of self-reported anxiety predicted right amygdala activation independent of emotional valence. These results suggest that levels of anxiety are important for deviant patterns of amygdala activation independent of primary diagnoses. In the future, knowledge about the unique contribution of anxiety and depression to deviant brain activation patterns may be used to adapt therapy guidelines. Floris Klumpers Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour: Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen Objective: Using a recently developed design to assess the distinct neural correlates related to anxiety onset and relief, we explored how individual differences in these processes affect defensive reflex physiology and the relation with putative genetic risk for anxiety-related psychopathology, in the form of the 5-HTTLPR short allele. Method: Sixty-nine subjects were genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and viewed instructed cues signaling shock threat and safety that were separated by resting phases. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to map neural responses to both the on- and offsets of these cues. Electromyographic recordings of the startle reflex were used to reveal neural correlates of objectively assessed defensive state. Results: The onset of threat cues was associated with activity in a neural network supporting fearful vigilance, encompassing the dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula. The termination of threat was associated with increased activity in a lateral prefrontal network. Subjects with stronger reactions in the vigilance circuit showed more intense defensive states indexed by startle. Conversely, stronger activity in the prefrontal circuit during threat was associated with defensive states of reduced intensity. Carriers of two short alleles for the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism showed heightened reactivity in the vigilance network relative to long allele homozygotes, particularly in the bilateral insula. Interestingly short allele carriers also showed relatively stronger lateral prefrontal reactivity at threat offset. Conclusions: These results reveal a neurocircuitry that enables up- and downregulation of defensive states. Moreover, the results provide a mechanistic account for how genetic variability in serotonin transporter function could predispose to stress-related disorders, especially when compensatory prefrontal mechanisms might be impaired. Geert-Jan Will Leiden University Dealing with Social Exclusion: Neural Correlates of Punishment and Forgiveness of Excluders This fMRI study examined the neural correlates of punishment and forgiveness towards initiators of social exclusion (i.e. “excluders”). Participants divided money between themselves and people who previously either included or excluded them during a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball). Participants selectively punished the excluders by decreasing their outcomes, even when this was costly. Punishment of excluders was associated with increased activation in pre-supplementary motor area and bilateral anterior insula. Refraining from punishment (i.e. forgiveness) was associated with increased activation in the bilateral temporo-parietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and ventral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Together, these findings show that social exclusion can result in punishment as well as forgiveness of excluders, and separable neural networks associated with norm violations, social cognition and cognitive control are recruited when people choose to punish or to forgive those who excluded them. Hannah De Mulder Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University Linking words to objects: Does it matter how much you like the speaker? Reference resolution, the ability to work out what speakers are referring to when they say things like “this experiment”, or “that candle”, is fundamental for communication. One powerful heuristic in this process is to take the speaker’s perspective in determining the intended referent. For example, when a speaker wishes to draw the listener’s attention to one specific object out of several objects, listeners should expect the speaker to only refer to objects that they both can see (i.e. that are shared). Interestingly, listeners are not always particularly good at using the speaker’s perspective to determine reference, sometimes getting distracted by things that only they can see (Keysar et al., 2000). For instance, when people hear a speaker refer to ‘the small candle’ in a situation in which the speaker sees a big and a small candle while the listener sees those two plus an even smaller candle (that is hidden from the speaker’s view), listeners are often distracted by the latter, even though they know it cannot have been the candle intended by the speaker. In the current study, we ask whether such a perspective-taking failure depends on whether listeners like the speaker or not, and, furthermore, whether any such effects vary with their prenatal testosterone level, and/or self-reported tendency to “take other people’s perspective”, as both factors have been shown to influence behaviour in social interactions. 56 female subjects participated in an eye-tracking study that required them to link particular objects to a sentence uttered by either a friendly or an unfriendly speaker. Crucially, the subjects knew that certain objects were only visible to them and that the speaker could thus never refer to those objects. On target trials, subjects had to actively ignore a seemingly relevant, but hidden, object to evaluate the sentence. To determine the role of speaker (dis)like in this process, subjects first played a game with the speaker in which they could win or lose desirable items depending on the speaker’s decisions. Prenatal testosterone was determined by calculating the ratio of the index and ring finger of the right hand; perspective taking scores were taken from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index self-report scale. As in previous studies, subjects were distracted by seemingly relevant, but hidden objects. Critically, though, the level of distraction depended on subjects’ like or dislike of the speaker, in combination with their self-reported tendency to take another’s perspective and their prenatal testosterone exposure. Specifically, when listening to the unfriendly speaker, subjects who reported higher perspective-taking tendencies were especially distracted by the seemingly relevant but hidden object, whereas listening to a friendly speaker showed reduced distraction by this object. Additionally, subjects with lower prenatal testosterone exposure experienced significant distraction by the seemingly relevant but hidden object when listening to the friendly speaker. Surprisingly, these results thus suggest that under certain conditions, speaker (dis)like actually influences the listener’s ability to engage in a very basic aspect of human language processing: identifying what a particular word actually refers to when processing a simple, neutral visual scene. Hilâl Cerit Institute of Psychology: Clinical, Health and Neuropsychology Unit, Leiden University Effect of tryptophan supplementation on the cortisol response to social stress is modulated by 5-HTTLPR genotype OBJECTIVE: The S’/S’ (S/S, S/Lg and Lg/Lg) variant of the serotonin (5HT) transporter gene linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with less efficient neurotransmission and may be more reactive to 5-HT manipulations. We tested the effects of L-tryptophan supplements on the cortisol response induced by a social stressor in S’/S’ and L’/L’ (La/La) carriers. METHODS: In a double-blind parallel design, 25 S’/S’ carriers and 21 L’/L’ carriers were randomised to take L-tryptophan (2.8 g/d) or placebo supplements for six days. At day 7 participants were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test. Salivary cortisol and subjective mood states were monitored before, during and after the stress procedure. RESULTS: S’/S’ carriers who took L-tryptophan supplements had a significantly lower cortisol response to stress than S’/S’ carriers who took placebo. Tryptophan had no effect on cortisol in L’/L’ carriers and no effect on subjective mood states in either genotype group. CONCLUSION: Tryptophan attenuates the cortisol response to acute social stress depending on 5-HTTLPR genotype. S’/S’ carriers may indeed be more reactive to 5-HT manipulations. PNEC, Volume 38, Issue 2, February 2013, Pages 201–208. Sina Radke Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen The steroid testosterone is an adaptive social hormone involved in a wide range of motivational behaviors, in particular those related to social approach, i.e. approach to conspecifics in the context of reproduction and aggression. Recent administration studies demonstrated that testosterone increases approach behavior to angry faces by means of unconscious eye gaze and automatic social approach-avoidance tendencies (Terburg et al., 2012; Enter et al., in prep). The neural mechanisms of these endocrine modulations of social approach behavior, however, remain largely unclear. Correlational evidence from a male sample (Volman et al., 2011) pointed to an association of higher endogenous testosterone levels and 1) decreased activity of the anterior prefrontal cortex and 2) reduced connectivity between the anterior prefrontal cortex and the amygdala during social motivational behavior. In order to investigate the causal role of testosterone in the modulation of prefrontal activity and coupling with limbic areas, the present study used a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind between-subject design. Four hours after having received 0.5mg testosterone or placebo sublingually, 54 healthy females underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing the Approach-Avoidance Task. In this reaction time task, participants responded to happy and angry facial expressions by pulling a joystick towards (approach) or pushing it away from their body (avoid). For motivationally incompatible compared to compatible responses, the right anterior prefrontal cortex was involved, which replicates previous findings on the neural regulation of social approach-avoidance tendencies (e.g. Volman et al., 2011). In addition, increased activation of the right amygdala was evident for the testosterone group compared to the placebo group. This effect was due to enhanced amygdala activity for approach vs. avoidance of angry faces, indicating a differentiation between opposing motivational responses to social threat cues. Testosterone is likely to facilitate adaptive responding to different environmental demands and challenges, rendering it an important regulator of various expressions of social approach behavior. Ongoing analyses will examine the coupling between the amygdala and prefrontal regions after testosterone administration. Anna Tyborowska1 Radboud University Nijmegen, Behavioural Science Institute (BSI), Radboud University Nijmegen 2 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Freeze – Fight – Flight Reactions in Adolescence When control of socio-emotional behavior fails, people fall back on basic "freeze-fight-flight" (FFF) reactions. These automatic action tendencies result in approaching or avoiding a social stimulus. Chronic failures in socio-emotional control are found in anxiety and aggression-related disorders. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the development and control of these FFF tendencies during a time period that is sensitive to external as well as internal influences. Adolescence is precisely such a critical period and constitutes a transition phase between childhood and adulthood when a wide range of social, behavioral, emotional, and physical changes take place. We assessed the control of social emotional behavior with the Social Approach Avoidance (AA-) Task in a group of 14 year old adolescents (n=49). During this task, participants have to respond to affective faces (happy, angry) with approach and avoidance movements. Affect – incongruent conditions require participants to control their automatic action tendencies (i.e. approach –happy and avoid-angry faces) to meet task demands (i.e. approach – angry and avoid – happy faces). In accordance with previous studies conducted in adults, we found that affect-incongruent trials required more control than affect-congruent trials, as evidenced by longer RTs in the former. Furthermore, testosterone levels obtained from the same participants modulated responses to happy and angry faces as well as their approach-avoidance tendencies. Ongoing and planned studies will isolate the predictive markers of FFF tendencies from childhood to adulthood in the development of aggression and anxiety. Genetic, hormonal, and psychometric traits of adolescents and the cerebral activity evoked during socio-emotional control will be considered. Longitudinal data analysis from infancy to and across adolescence will enable causal predictions of the role of FFF tendencies in the development of social affective disorders. Xu Gong 1 National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neurosciences and Learning, Beijing Normal University, 100875, China. 2 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. Influence of trait-anxiety on inhibition control: Evidence from ERPs study Mood and emotional disorders have a large influence on our daily life, with anxiety one of the most familiar negative emotions. A large body of research has demonstrated that anxiety impacts the process of cognitive and executive control. Anxious individuals have in particular an attentional bias to threat-related stimulus, A phenomenon that has been demonstrated in anxiety disorders as well as in state and trait anxiety. The main purpose of this study was to detect the differences in the inhibitory processes between high and low trait anxiety individuals. Inhibition function can be divided into response inhibition and cognitive inhibition, and based on the results of the prior research and the extant theories, the present study investigated the differential impact of high versus low trait-anxiety on oculomotor suppression in attentional control in an anti-saccade task. STAI, DASS, BDI questionnaires were collected to distinguish the high versus low trait anxious groups of participants, who were college students. TAI score of the High anxious (HA) group (56.82 ± 5.526) of 22 students was significantly higher than that of the Low anxious (LA) group (31.67 ± 4.102) of 18 students. Angry and Neutral facial expression pictures were selected from (Chinese Facial Affective Picture System, CFPS) and used as the emotional stimuli for a pro- versus anti-saccade electrophysiology experiment. Heoggrab sufficient to detect saccades in both conditions, so it was used to calculate saccades. Lower ACC and longer RT were found in the antisaccade task. The prosaccade task is less difficult than antisaccade which has two processes including a reflective action inhibition and a top-down new saccade generation. In the ERP data, an interaction was observed between emotional valence and anxiety level in the frontalcentral N1, suggesting that LA can better distinguish the emotional information than HA at the early processing stage. In addition, N2 amplitude was enhanced in the antisaccade task especially in the HA but not LA. This result suggests that non-clinical HA engages compensatory mechanisms that enhance the neural activity in order to complete the task-related activity. The result contributes to the attention control literature, and shows that anxiety impairs processing efficiency more than performance effectiveness. The inhibition function of anxious individuals is impaired especially for the negative stimulus. Webdesign by Bungewerk