Biological psychology
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Biological psychology · Sep 2009
Non-musicians' perception of phrase boundaries in music: A cross-cultural ERP study.
The present study investigates neural responses to musical phrase boundaries in subjects without formal musical training, with special emphasis on the issue of cultural familiarity (i.e., the relation between the enculturation of the subjects and the cultural style of the presented music). German and Chinese non-musicians listened to Western and Chinese melodies which contained manipulated phrase boundaries while event-related potentials (ERP) were measured. The behavioral data clearly showed that melodic phrase boundary perception is influenced by cultural familiarity. ⋯ In contrast, cultural familiarity only influenced phrase boundary processing at longer latencies, reflected by a P3-like component peaking at 280ms. At about 450-600ms post phrase boundary offset, we observed a slightly right-lateralized music closure positive shift (CPS), which has been reported as a marker for phrase boundary processing in musicians in earlier studies. This study demonstrates for the first time that the music CPS can be elicited in non-musicians, suggesting that the underlying phrase boundary processing does not require formal musical training.
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Biological psychology · Jul 2009
Effects of sex, phase of the menstrual cycle and gonadal hormones on pain in healthy humans.
Sex differences in pain have been noted; women typically report more pain than men. Gonadal hormones may influence pain reports, and, moreover, such hormones may help to explain sex differences and menstrual cycle differences in pain. This study measured venipuncture and intravenous catherization pain during the follicular and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle in regularly menstruating women. ⋯ Within-phase analyses revealed that pain ratings were positively correlated with estradiol and progesterone during the luteal phase. Moreover, increases in estradiol and progesterone across the menstrual cycle were positively correlated with increases in pain. These findings suggest that variations in gonadal hormones during the menstrual cycle influence the experience of pain in healthy women.
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Biological psychology · Dec 2008
Salivary dehydroepiandrosterone secretion in response to acute psychosocial stress and its correlations with biological and psychological changes.
We investigated dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) secretion in response to acute psychosocial stress and the relations of DHEA secretion to cortisol secretion, cardiovascular activity, and negative mood changes. Thirty-three male students (mean age 22.6 years) were subjected to the psychosocial stress test "Trier Social Stress Test" (TSST), in which the participants were asked to deliver a speech and perform a mental arithmetic task in front of two audiences. Collections of saliva, measurements of blood pressure and heart rate, and assessments of negative mood by visual analog scales were conducted before, during, and after TSST. ⋯ DHEA response was moderately correlated to cortisol response (r=.34, r(s)=.49) but not to cardiovascular response. Lower DHEA level and elevated cortisol/DHEA ratio during TSST were significantly and moderately correlated with increased negative mood during and after TSST. These results indicated that an acute increase in DHEA concentration under stressful situations might be partly mediated by the activity of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and could have some significance in the improvement of negative mood.
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Biological psychology · Oct 2008
Relationship between trait anxiety, prefrontal cortex, and attention bias to angry faces in children and adolescents.
Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a visual-probe task that assesses attention to threat, we investigated the cognitive and neurophysiological correlates of trait anxiety in youth. During fMRI acquisition, 16 healthy children and adolescents viewed angry-neutral face pairs and responded to a probe that was on the same (angry-congruent) or opposite (angry-incongruent) side as the angry face. ⋯ Neurophysiologically, trait anxiety was positively associated with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation on a contrast of trials that reflect the attention bias for angry faces (i.e. angry-incongruent versus angry-congruent trials). Trait anxiety was also positively associated with right ventrolateral PFC activation on trials with face stimuli (vesus baseline), irrespective of their emotional content.
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Biological psychology · Oct 2008
A study on the neural mechanism of inhibition of return by the event-related potential in the Go/NoGo task.
Inhibition of return (IOR) is a slowed response to a stimulus at recently cued locations when stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) are longer than 250 ms. Using an uninformative peripheral cued Go/NoGo (commit/withdrawal response) task experiment, this study aimed to characterize the neural mechanism of IOR by studying not only the early event-related potentials (ERPs), P1 and N1, but also the late ERPs, Go/NoGo-N2 and P3. Scalp topographies and LORETA showed that the changes in P1 and N1, the cueing effects, were distributed mainly over the dorsal occipito-parietal areas, such as the bilateral middle occipital gyrus and the occipital portion of the cuneus. ⋯ The NoGo-N2 was smaller and earlier in valid trials than in invalid trials, suggesting that the late component related to IOR was modulated by response preparation inhibition. The NoGo-P3 was larger and later in valid trials than in invalid trials, perhaps indicating that the control system (FEF) was free from an inhibitory marker in the cued locations. These data support a mechanism of IOR consisting of both sensory inhibition and response preparation inhibition.