Music listening, a common daily activity recognized for its emotional impact and ability to evoke memories, engages physiological and psychological processes. Concurrent electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) during music listening can inform our understanding of these processes. However, the insights offered by such simultaneous recordings, and the extent to which existing studies align with published methodological guidelines, remain unclear. To address this gap, we conducted a scoping review of peer-reviewed research examining physiological responses to passive music listening using combined EEG and ECG measures in healthy adult non-musicians. A structured search of five databases identified 18 papers. Data on methods, participant demographics, musical stimuli, and EEG/ECG measures were extracted and compared against established guidelines to clarify the studies' methodological rigor. EEG findings were highly heterogeneous, spanning spectral power, lateralized effects, and event-related potentials, with limited overlap in analytical focus. Cardiac outcomes were similarly mixed, with studies reporting increases, decreases, or no change in heart rate depending on stimulus and context. Only a small subset of studies examined brain-heart coupling directly, with preliminary evidence of synchronization between neural and cardiac rhythms during music listening, leaving the central question of how brain and heart respond together to music largely open. Our review identified significant methodological inconsistencies and a lack of integration between the two measures, highlighting the challenges of this interdisciplinary research. Advancing research in both music and psychophysiology requires improving alignment between methodologies from these distinct areas by following established standards. These findings highlight a critical need for greater methodological standardization to build a more reliable and replicable understanding of music's psychophysiological effects.
Cognitive load can reduce attention to negative stimuli, but its utility as an emotion regulation strategy may depend on whether it functions like avoidance, leading to short-term reductions in stimulus salience that nonetheless preserve or even heighten response to stimuli at subsequent encounters. Here, 73 participants performed a working memory task interspersed with negative and neutral pictures, prior to viewing the same pictures again alongside new negative and neutral pictures in a surprise recognition task. During the first task, working memory load reduced picture processing, replicating prior findings. During the second task, negative pictures that had previously been presented under high-load and new negative pictures were processed similarly, receiving more attentional resources than negative pictures that had been presented under low-load. Subjective picture ratings showed similar results, with negative pictures that had previously been presented under high-load rated as more arousing than those that had been presented under low-load, and indistinguishable from new negative pictures. Negative pictures that had previously been presented on high-load compared to low-load trials also had lower recognition accuracy. The overall direction of effects differed for neutral compared to negative pictures, but pictures that had been presented under high working memory resembled new pictures in the responses they elicited across both picture types. For negative stimuli, results suggest a mechanism through which disengaged emotion regulation strategies may fail to attenuate and may even increase emotional responses to stimuli when encountered again outside of the initial regulation context.
Premature birth increases risk for socio-emotional difficulties and altered autonomic regulation, yet because physiological regulation supports development, dysregulation may have lasting consequences. We evaluated social functioning and physiological regulation in 70 preterm children aged 5.5 years compared to 32 matched full-term controls (total sample: 59 boys, 43 girls; 98% White). Heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) were recorded during rest and structured social interactions with the mother and a stranger, including eye contact, conversations, and triadic play. Preterm children demonstrated significantly greater social difficulties and internalizing problems than full-term peers. Across conditions, the preterm children exhibited consistently elevated heart rate, whereas HRV patterns were comparable with the full-term group. Across both groups, RMSSD-HRV varied by interaction partner (stable with mother, fluctuating with stranger), while HF-HRV reflected general condition effects independent of partner familiarity. In both groups, conversation tasks elicited the strongest autonomic activation, with the lowest parasympathetic indices during negative interactions. In conclusion, preterm children show persistent cardiac hyperarousal and social-behavioral difficulties yet maintain context-dependent autonomic regulation similar to full-term peers. The distinct sensitivity of HRV indices suggests preserved regulatory mechanisms, indicating that prematurity's physiological signature may reflect heightened baseline arousal rather than impaired regulation.
Misophonia is characterized by decreased tolerance to specific trigger sounds, yet the underlying physiological mechanisms remain poorly understood. Misophonic responses are also often reported to be elicited not only by the auditory triggers themselves, but also by visual cues associated with those sounds. However, direct empirical evidence for visual cues associated with auditory triggers remains limited. Moreover, it is not known if misophonic responses can be elicited in the absence of any sensory input, such as during auditory mental imagery. The present study systematically examined physiological responses to misophonic trigger stimuli across auditory and visual sensory modalities, as well as auditory imagery, using multi-channel psychophysiological measures and both trial-wise and time-resolved approaches. Individuals with misophonia and matched control participants were exposed to trigger, generally aversive, and non-aversive stimuli presented in auditory, visual (silent video), and auditory imagery conditions. Physiological responses were recorded across five channels, including electromyographic activity over corrugator supercilii (EMGc) and zygomaticus major (EMGz) muscles, electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate (HR), and fingertip skin temperature. Compared with generally aversive stimuli, auditory trigger sounds elicited significantly greater physiological responses in individuals with misophonia than in control participants, characterized by increased EMGc, EMGz, EDA, and HR, indicating heightened affective and autonomic engagement beyond general aversiveness. Silent visual trigger cues also evoked greater trigger-specific physiological responses, although these effects were observed in fewer physiological channels (primarily EMGc and HR). Auditory mental imagery produced weaker group-level physiological effects, with significant differentiation limited to EDA. Across all three modalities, greater trial-wise subjective distress was consistently associated with greater EMGc, EMGz, and EDA responses, as well as greater HR responses in the auditory and visual modalities, indicating a close correspondence between physiological activation and the subjective experience of misophonic distress. In contrast, physiological overactivation was not significantly associated with overall misophonia severity or auditory imagery ability. Together, these findings provide the most comprehensive characterization to date of peripheral physiological responses in misophonia across auditory and visual perception, as well as auditory imagery. They demonstrate that misophonia is characterized by exaggerated affective and autonomic physiological responses to trigger sounds, extend this response profile to silent visual cues associated with trigger sounds, and provide initial evidence that auditory mental imagery can engage selected components of the misophonic response.
Reward expectations are fundamental to theories of decision making and reinforcement learning. While prior research has focused on how expectations can influence outcome processing, far fewer studies have investigated how these expectations are actually formed. To address this gap, we measured EEG activity from participants as they completed a two-stage binary-choice task designed to separate the formation of expectations about outcome probabilities from the processing of actual reward outcomes. To more fully examine the neural mechanisms underlying each stage, we measured the Reward Positivity (RewP) and P3b time-domain event-related potential (ERP) components, as well as the delta- and theta-band activity underlying each ERP. During the Outcome Probability stage, participants learned the likelihood of their choice winning on that trial. Each measure of RewP-latency activity (ERP, delta, theta) was larger for outcomes that were certain to occur, but each measure diverged in its relationship to outcome valence. Conversely, all P3b-latency measures were increased for losses that were certain to occur. Notably, changes in RewP-Theta, not in ERP components, provided the earliest marker of sensitivity to certain losses. At the Actual Outcome stage, the RewP and P3b-ERPs were larger for unexpected wins, consistent with theories of reward prediction errors and context updating. Delta activity generally followed the patterns observed in its temporally matched ERP but displayed an inconsistent relationship with outcome valence, suggesting that it may reflect contextualized feedback processing rather than a specific win-related signal. Theta was insensitive to outcome valence and only sensitive to expectations at longer latencies, indicating a shift from valence-sensitive processing during expectation formation to a broader role in monitoring expectancy violations. Together, the results underscore the importance of temporally and functionally distinguishing between the expectation formation and outcome phases, while demonstrating the value of multimethodological analytical approaches to fully capture the dynamic nature of reward-based decision-making.
Time perception-the subjective sense of how quickly or consistently time passes-shows striking variability across individuals, yet its physiological basis remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that internal clock speed and trial-to-trial variability in time perception would be linked to physiological and behavioral states. In a cohort of healthy adults (n = 59) and individuals carrying rare mitochondrial DNA mutations affecting mitochondrial energy transformation (n = 36), we explored the associations between time perception (time estimation and production) with measures of immune mitochondrial bioenergetics, blood catecholamines, working memory, and structural and functional neuroimaging. We found weak evidence suggesting that internal clock speed and time perception variability correlated with age and physiological metrics including resting energy expenditure, serum and urine norepinephrine levels, mood and fatigue, working memory performance, and neuroimaging measures of brain structure and function. Individuals with mitochondrial disorders and those with healthy mitochondria exhibited no main difference in time perception. However, they exhibited differential relations with physiological and neural variables, suggesting that mitochondria may moderate how specific processes influence time perception. These results provide a foundation for future studies to examine how cellular bioenergetics relate to time perception in humans.
Placebo pills reliably reduce pain. Pain perception is tied to increased arousal and heart rate. Heart rate perception is, in turn, closely related to interoceptive signals processing, for example, pain and autonomic regulation. However, no studies so far have systematically examined the generalizing versus specific effects of placebo analgesia in transferring from pain to the interoception of cardiac signals. In this preregistered, exploratory study, we aim to investigate whether the placebo analgesia effect on pain may generalize to the perception of one's own heartbeat. We recruited 88 healthy participants (47 female, 41 male), of which half (23 female, 21 male) underwent a deceptive placebo analgesia induction. Using the Heartbeat Counting Task and the MAIA questionnaire, we derived three interoceptive dimensions: interoceptive accuracy, sensibility (at both task-related and trait levels), and awareness. Despite a robust placebo analgesia effect, no difference between the placebo and the control group was found in any of the interoceptive dimensions. These findings were supported by post hoc Bayesian analyses, which indicated moderate evidence for this absence of a group difference. Our findings thus do not indicate a generalization of the placebo analgesia effect from pain to cardiac interoceptive awareness. Studies such as the present one are important to better understand the perception of different bodily systems and their connection in humans.
Social interactions are shaped by rapid perception of others' racial group membership, which influences downstream judgments and behavior. Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a method for examining how attention is allocated to race-related cues at very early stages of face perception. Prior research has shown that White perceivers attend more to Black faces than White faces, as indexed by the P2 component, but theoretical explanations of this effect are limited by over-reliance on White participants and limited consideration of how race perception operates within a racial hierarchy. Here, we expand prior research by recruiting Latiné undergraduate participants (N = 93) and expanding face stimuli to include Black, Latiné, and White faces that varied in terms of racial prototypicality (i.e., racially ambiguous faces were included). Replicating prior findings, Black faces elicited larger P2 amplitudes than both White faces and Latiné faces. Multilevel modeling of single-trial ERPs also found that racial prototypicality moderated P2 responses to each face, such that higher prototypicality predicted larger P2 amplitudes for Black and Latiné faces but not White faces. Self-reports of how threatened perceivers felt by each racial group did not account for these effects. Last, larger trial-level P2 amplitudes predicted faster categorization responses, but only for highly prototypical faces. Findings suggest that early attention is preferentially allocated to faces with high potential for non-White racial classification and that this attentional prioritization facilitates racial categorization only when visual cues are more racially prototypical.
Biological theories propose distinct physiological profiles for premeditated aggression (PM) and impulsive aggression (IA), yet prior research has relied on single-system markers that have yielded inconsistent findings, and no study has examined PNS-SNS interplay in relation to these aggression subtypes in adult samples including active offenders. This study investigated whether multisystem autonomic profiles at rest and during a modified Trier Social Stress Task differentially associated with PM and IA in a heterogeneous urban adult sample. Active offenders, demographically matched controls, and college students (N = 130, all male, M age = 28 years) were recruited in Atlanta. Skin conductance and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were recorded at rest and during three mTSST components varying in social confrontation demand and cognitive load. Each aggression subtype was modeled with the other adjusted for (PM and IA correlated at r = 0.54), so all associations pertain to the variance unique to that subtype. Baseline RSA was positively associated with PM only at low to moderate baseline SCL, and both reciprocal PNS and SNS activation profiles during social confrontation were associated with higher PM. Low baseline RSA was associated with more IA regardless of arousal level, with no significant reactivity interactions. All findings are replicated using peak-to-valley RSA. These results indicate that PM and IA are associated with qualitatively distinct multisystem physiological profiles. PM was associated with two divergent patterns under social challenge, physiological disengagement and organized mobilization, whereas IA was associated with a single trait-level marker of low regulatory capacity independent of situational arousal.
Neuroscience is posited to be generalisable and unbiased, yet recent reviews highlight the continued underrepresentation of minority racial groups in EEG research. Among the most frequently identified methodological barriers to inclusion are the hair types, styles, and volume prevalent in Black individuals, assumed to substantially increase cap-fitting difficulty and compromise data quality. Yet, while proposed solutions often put the onus on participants (i.e., hairstyle changes), there is-to our knowledge-no current evidence demonstrating EEG data quality variation as a product of race. In the present study we analyzed data from wet and dry EEG systems to explore how race (Black/White) and/or gender (female/male) impact data quality. Dry EEG data was collected at a university in the UAE (N = 60, 30F, 30 M, 30 Black, 30 White) and wet EEG data was generously shared by Pech and Caspar (2024) (N = 53, 36F, 17 M, 27 Black, 26 White). Five data quality metrics were analyzed: bad electrode count, ICA decomposition quality, artifact rejection rate, baseline standard deviation, and standardized measurement error. We found no evidence of inferior data quality in Black participants across any measure or either system. In contrast, female (vs. male) participants presented with poorer data quality in metrics from both system types. While qualitative experimenter data acquisition notes (available for the dry EEG system data) suggest that EEG capping may prove more challenging with Black (vs White) participants, this does not appear to translate to a reduction in data quality. Our findings suggest that good quality data can be collected from Black participants across a range of EEG systems, and that the development of new methods or techniques is not necessarily a prerequisite to greater representation in EEG research.
This study investigated age-related differences in the influence of spatial and modality-specific precues on preparation and target processing in crossmodal action. Younger and older adults (n = 36 and 33) performed a crossmodal response-precueing task requiring speeded choice responses, either manually or vocally, to unimodal visual or auditory targets, while event-related potentials were recorded. Three precue types were used: modality precues, which indicated the response effector without spatial information; spatial precues, which indicated abstract left-right response information without specifying the effector; and uninformative precues. Behaviorally, informative precues were associated with better performance in both age groups, but older adults showed faster and less accurate responses following spatial precues, suggesting that advance left-right response information facilitated rapid responding but increased response-selection errors when it had to be mapped onto the appropriate manual or vocal response after target onset. At the neural level, cue-locked contingent negative variation results indicated cue-related modulation of sustained preparation and overall reduced preparatory engagement in older adults. Target-locked early negativity, analyzed across manual and vocal response conditions, showed the clearest age-dependent cue modulation, whereas P3 measures indicated broader age-related differences in target-related processing. Cue-locked lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs), analyzed for manual-response trials, showed lateralized activity within the cue-target interval only following spatial precues, providing evidence of lateralized response preparation when response-side information was available before target onset, whereas target-locked LRP onset analyses in manual-response trials provided limited evidence for reliable cue- or age-dependent differences in LRP timing. Together, these findings suggest that aging alters how precues are used to configure preparation under unresolved response uncertainty. Spatial precues can support rapid responding in older adults, but this preparation may become error-prone when the appropriate response effector must still be selected after target onset.
Regulation of autonomic arousal during infancy is critical for the development of self-regulation, socioemotional development and cognitive functioning. High frequency heart rate variability (HRV), a key indicator of parasympathetic nervous system function, supports physiological regulation and emerging behaviors that foster social engagement during this critical developmental period. However, research on HRV has largely been confined to controlled settings with highly resourced populations, limiting its applicability to culturally and contextually diverse populations. This study presents a protocol for collecting HRV data from 1-month-old infants in remote and low-resource field contexts, specifically, the Rohingya camps and surrounding host communities in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. We present a three-step process to address challenges inherent to working in such contexts while ensuring ecological validity and cultural sensitivity, navigating logistical challenges, and optimizing data quality. Data quality metrics in 148 infants showed high usability, with 86% of data being usable when infants were held by their mothers (joint condition), and 80% when they were alone (solo condition). Aligning with theoretical expectations, higher respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA, extracted from HRV) was negatively correlated with behavioral arousal (e.g., more alert, exhibiting motor activity) in both conditions. RSA also remained stable across 30-s segments within each baseline condition, indicating no systematic change in mean RSA levels across time. This study demonstrates a scalable, ethical approach to collecting HRV data in remote field settings, providing a foundation for exploring how early autonomic development intersects with proximal processes such as caregiving across diverse cultural contexts. This protocol aims to advance equity and inclusivity in developmental psychophysiology while maintaining rigorous scientific standards.
The Bivalent Evaluation Fear Hypothesis posits that fear of positive evaluation (FPE) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) are two independent core characteristics of social anxiety. However, whether they rely on dissociable and/or shared neural mechanisms in the processing of social motivation remains unclear. By employing the Social Incentive Delay Task combined with EEG, we found that during the anticipation phase, individuals with high FPE exhibited "generalized over-engagement toward evaluative situations"-enhanced conflict monitoring (N2) and motivational preparation (CNV) in response to both reward and punishment cues. In contrast, individuals with high FNE displayed "specific threat vigilance with generalized motivational withdrawal"-demonstrating enhanced N2 specifically to punishment cues, along with reduced CNV to both reward and punishment cues, consistent with a profile of defensive motivational inhibition. During the feedback phase, neither group exhibited the positive-over-negative feedback effect observed in the control group, with reduced delta and theta oscillations in response to socially accepting feedback, suggesting a possible commonality in deep reward integration. These findings demonstrate that FPE and FNE are associated with distinct neuro-affective preparatory patterns during anticipation: one characterized by a generalized, vigilant over-mobilization, and the other by specific threat vigilance coupled with a generalized reduction in motivational engagement. At the same time, the similar delta and theta patterns during feedback may reflect a common difficulty in translating positive social outcomes into adaptive motivational behaviors. This study deepens our understanding of evaluation fears and provides critical neural evidence in support of the Bivalent Evaluation Fear Hypothesis.
The present study employed a sensory preconditioning paradigm combined with behavioral measures and event-related potential (ERP) techniques to investigate whether emotional information could retroactively modulate the processing of previously encoded neutral concrete and abstract words. Behavioral results indicated that word memory performance was retroactively modulated by subsequent emotional conditioning: when the objects paired with abstract words were associated with aversive (vs. neutral) sounds subsequently, recognition accuracy was significantly higher and reaction times faster; for concrete words, however, no significant differences in accuracy or reaction time emerged between the two sound conditions. Additionally, liking ratings for both word types decreased overall. ERP results elicited by the words revealed that, in early attentional stages, abstract words whose paired objects were associated with aversive sounds evoked larger P200 amplitudes than those in the neutral condition. During memory retrieval, abstract words indirectly linked to aversive sounds (compared to the neutral condition) elicited smaller N400 and larger late positive component (LPC) amplitudes, reflecting enhanced early attentional capture, increased familiarity, and optimized recollection. In contrast, concrete words whose paired objects were associated with aversive sounds (compared to the neutral condition) elicited a larger right-lateralized early posterior negativity (EPN), suggesting rapid activation of early emotional processing, but showed no significant changes in mid-to-late memory-related components. These findings indicate that retroactive emotional learning selectively enhances memory for abstract words, supporting the representational substitution hypothesis and behavioral tagging theory, whereas its influence on concrete words is primarily manifested in early emotional modulation, consistent with partial expectations of the multimodal induction hypothesis.
Pupil responses shape the earliest stages of visual perception by regulating the amount of light that enters the eye. How this affects visual processing is still poorly understood. Here we present evidence that pupil constriction causes activity in the human retina and visual system, independently of visual stimulation. Healthy human participants (N = 119) viewed brief visual stimuli (light increments or decrements) while pupil size, retinal activity (electroretinogram), and brain activity (electroencephalogram) were recorded. As expected, visual stimulation triggered an initial burst of retinal activity followed by pupil constriction (the pupil light response). Importantly, we used trial-to-trial variability in constriction latency to reveal a previously unknown retinal response that is locked to pupil constriction, rather than to visual stimulation. Presumably, and in line with similar findings in mice, this constriction-locked retinal activity is a response to the sudden decrease in retinal light exposure that accompanies pupil constriction (although a contribution of iris muscle activity is not conclusively ruled out). A similar constriction-locked response emerged later over visual cortex. Given these findings, an important open question is how the visual system maintains brightness constancy despite pupil-induced retinal and cortical activity.
The fast periodic visual stimulation oddball paradigm (FPVS-oddball), which combines multi-input frequency tagging with an oddball design, is a powerful electroencephalography (EEG) technique for probing cognitive function. Traditionally, FPVS-oddball analysis collapses steady-state responses across harmonics into composite measures, which improves response detection but discards valuable information about the harmonic composition of responses. Here, we apply a two-dimensional (sensor × harmonic) permutation test, incorporating a novel free harmonic clustering procedure that allows clustering across sensors and harmonics, thereby preserving harmonic-related information. Using datasets on object recognition (real vs. pseudo-objects) and line orientation discrimination, we show that the two-dimensional approach detects condition-specific differences in the spatial and harmonic distribution of responses that are missed by a one-dimensional (sensor-only) test of composite responses. For object recognition, real objects elicited stronger left- and right-lateralised oddball responses at higher harmonics, consistent with additional semantic processing. For orientation discrimination, large versus small deviations elicited distinct harmonic-specific activation patterns, reflecting qualitatively different processing. These results demonstrate that two-dimensional cluster-based permutation testing provides sensitivity to the spatial and harmonic distribution of FPVS-oddball responses.
Black participants are often excluded from electroencephalography (EEG) studies due to perceived difficulty in achieving acceptable electrode impedance for participants with tightly curled hair. This has led to unrepresentative samples and poor external validity in EEG research. Here we apply and validate contemporary recruitment and preparation recommendations to replicate emotional perception effects in a diverse sample and investigate an inconsistent finding in the ingroup/outgroup face processing literature. This was achieved via Bayesian multilevel modeling to assess signal-quality at the level of individual participants. Here three groups, including Black women, White women, and a group excluding Black and White women viewed emotionally arousing and neutral naturalistic scenes, as well as matched portraits of Black and White male faces. The modulation of onset-evoked ERPs including the P100, N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and late parietal positivity (LPP) was analyzed to understand interindividual differences in categorical effects. With minor adjustments to recruitment and electrode cap placement procedures, no data from Black participants were excluded, and EEG artifacts and signal-quality were equivalent or better for all participants relative to those in the other groups. The ERP results showed strong consistency across the sample groups, replicating patterns of EPN and LPP modulation across 6 scene categories. Relative to White faces, portraits of Black faces evoked larger amplitudes in the N170, EPN, and LPP across all participant groups. The N170 was modestly predicted by rated arousal of the face portraits and self-reported quantity of outgroup social contact, but these moderators did not explain the large amplitude differences. Interpretations are considered, including the possibility that portrait lighting may be less suitable for Black faces, thus increasing a demand for configural processing associated with N170 amplitude. More speculatively, cultural stigmatization effects in the United States may also contribute to experienced arousal and ERP modulation across all groups.
Pragmatic language differences are present in the broad autism phenotype (BAP). Objective markers of pragmatic language subprocesses, such as inter-speaker turn-taking, may enhance understanding of these differences. Here, we examined how neural and behavioral responses elicited by inter-speaker turn-taking are related to the BAP, using well-validated conversational stimuli with different inter-speaker gap durations in a stratified sample of 63 adults selected for varied autism-associated traits. As outcomes, we measured ERPs elicited by inter-speaker gap (stimulus-preceding negativity) and speaker response (P3), and subjective ratings of conversation quality. Among individuals with more autism-associated traits, extended inter-speaker gaps were considered less salient as indicated by reduced P3. However, monitoring of inter-speaker gaps and perceived conversation quality were unrelated to autism-associated traits. These findings provide preliminary evidence that pragmatic inference of inter-speaker gaps may be specifically disrupted in those endorsing a higher degree of autism-associated traits and detectable with the P3 ERP, laying the foundation for similar neurobehavioral studies in autism.
