Cognitive trainings for pain are suggested as promising interventions targeting core mechanisms related to pain. However, their efficacy varies greatly, and the factors that moderate training efficacy are poorly understood. Thus, this study investigated how individual characteristics influence the effectiveness of two commonly used cognitive trainings, attention bias modification (ABM) and acceptance training, in modulating experimental pain. Eighty healthy females attended two sessions of either pain acceptance training or pain ABM training. Each participant underwent one active training session and one control session in a randomized order. Pre- and post-training assessments included emotional questionnaires, attention bias tasks, and quantitative sensory testing (QST). At the group level, both active trainings reduced sensitivity to the heat temperature participants were trained on, but were not more effective than the control conditions, and no other group-level improvements emerged in other pain sub-modalities. Nevertheless, greater attentional interference from pain-related images and higher fear of pain at baseline predicted greater reductions in heat pain sensitivity following the acceptance training. These preliminary findings emphasize the importance of baseline cognitive and emotional traits in shaping the efficacy of acceptance-based interventions. Tailoring interventions to individual profiles may enhance treatment outcomes, warranting further research into personalized approaches for pain management.

Introduction:Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) is a laboratory test of the efficacy of endogenous pain inhibition. Although the vagus nerve is thought to contribute to analgesia via descending inhibitory pathways, its role in CPM remains unclear. In addition, as vagal tone fluctuates across the menstrual cycle due to hormonal changes, the menstrual cycle's influence on the vagal-CPM association warrants investigation. Methods:Sixty-seven healthy females completed psychological questionnaires and underwent psychophysical assessments (1-minute tonic heat pain [THP] given alone and during CPM). An electrocardiogram was recorded at rest, and in 1-minute segments before, during, and after the THP alone, as well as during a conditioning stimulus (CPM paradigm). Heart rate variability was assessed using time- and frequency-domain indices. Menstrual phase was categorized as either follicular or luteal based on standard cycle-length division. Results:The interaction between the resting root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) and the menstrual cycle predicted better CPM efficiency. Post-hoc analysis revealed that the vagal-CPM association emerged solely in the follicular phase (β = -1.05, P = 0.010). Nevertheless, psychological factors did not influence the vagal-CPM association. The RMSSD broadly changed under pain with conditioning compared to baseline, with higher levels of RMSSD positively associated with CPM magnitude. Conclusions:The findings suggest a tentative menstrual cycle-dependent association between baseline vagal tone and pain inhibition in healthy females. Further, greater vagal activity contributes to more efficient pain inhibition. Future studies should use within-subject designs to examine how interactions between vagal and sympathetic activity across the menstrual cycle influence pain modulation.

BackgroundAttention is a key factor in shaping pain perception and modulation, yet its role in explaining individual differences in endogenous pain inhibition-commonly assessed in humans using conditioned pain modulation (CPM)-remains poorly understood. While studies show that attentional focus during dual pain stimulation can influence CPM efficacy, the contribution of attentional biases has not been examined. In addition, although psychological traits and autonomic nervous system activity have both been linked to CPM, their relative contributions to individual variability remain unclear. The present study examined whether attentional biases predict individual differences in pain sensitivity and endogenous pain modulation, and whether psychological, emotional, and autonomic factors are associated with these outcomes.MethodsEighty-six healthy women completed psychological questionnaires assessing anxiety, depression, and fear of pain. They also performed two modified attentional bias tasks: a novel perceptual load task and a dot-probe task. Quantitative sensory testing included pain ratings of suprathreshold tonic heat pain alone and under conditioning (CPM paradigm). Heart rate (HR) was measured at baseline, during, and after both test-stimulus alone and under conditioning.ResultsGreater interference from pain-related cues under high perceptual load was linked to increased pain sensitivity, whereas greater attentional avoidance in the dot-probe task was associated with higher fear of pain. In contrast, none of the examined factors predicted CPM magnitude. HR increased during the test-stimulus under conditioning and remained elevated in recovery. Exploratory analyses further showed that higher emotional distress was related to blunted HR during test-stimulus under conditioning, and that both perceptual load interference and attentional avoidance predicted elevated HR during recovery.ConclusionsAttentional biases to pain predicted pain sensitivity beyond psychological and autonomic influences. Although unrelated to CPM, they were associated with HR dynamics, suggesting a role in autonomic regulation during pain and recovery.

Previous research has consistently shown a positivity bias in old adults, with a preference for remembering positive information, primarily in tasks involving intentional learning, such as free recall. This study examined age-related differences in incidental learning of emotional stimuli, specifically examining how emotional valence influences memory within the framework of the Visual Statistical Learning (VSL) task. Participants across two age groups (young and old adults) viewed streams of object images with varying emotional valences (negative, positive, neutral) organized into triplets, unaware of their underlying structure. Subsequently, participants completed both a recognition test, assessing their ability to identify previously encountered triplets, and a free recall task. Results revealed no significant differences in overall VSL performance between age groups, indicating that the ability to extract statistical regularities remains stable across the lifespan. Interestingly, while old adults exhibited a positivity bias in free recall, as expected, this pattern was not observed in the VSL task, in which both young and old adults showed enhanced recognition of negative stimuli. These results highlight that the advantage in VSL is specific to negative stimuli. Critically, they reveal a dissociation, where positive stimuli were better recalled but did not enhance VSL performance, whereas negative stimuli enhanced VSL but were not preferentially recalled. Together, these findings suggest that the positivity effect depends on the form of retrieval, and underscore the crucial role of the retrieval process in shaping how emotional valence influences memory across different age groups, even when learning is incidental.

Cognitive training is a promising intervention for psychological distress; however, its effectiveness has yielded inconsistent outcomes across studies. This research is a pre-registered individual-level meta-analysis to identify factors contributing to cognitive training efficacy for anxiety and depression symptoms. Machine learning methods, alongside traditional statistical approaches, were employed to analyze 22 datasets with 1544 participants who underwent working memory training, attention bias modification, interpretation bias modification, or inhibitory control training. Baseline depression and anxiety symptoms were found to be the most influential factor, with individuals with more severe symptoms showing the greatest improvement. The number of training sessions was also important, with more sessions yielding greater benefits. Cognitive trainings were associated with higher predicted improvement than control conditions, with attention and interpretation bias modification showing the most promise. Despite the limitations of heterogeneous datasets, this investigation highlights the value of large-scale comprehensive analyses in guiding the development of personalized training interventions.

Previous research showed that negative valence images benefit memory tasks as well as visual statistical learning (VSL) tasks. Recent studies stressed another factor that strongly drives memory performance: Image memorability - an inherent property of the image regarding its likelihood to be remembered across observers. Here, we examined the influence of image memorability and emotional valence on VSL and the potential role of memorability explaining the benefit of negative valence in VSL tasks. In three VSL experiments, participants viewed a stream of repeating triplets of images. Importantly, the triplets were constructed of varying images in their emotional valence and memorability scores. We found that memorability significantly influenced VSL performance, with high-memorability images enhancing VSL compared to low-memorability images. The results also replicated the negative valence benefit, showing better VSL for negative valence images, but only under low-memorability conditions. The results demonstrate that memorability plays an important role in VSL, but it cannot fully account for the benefit seen with negative emotion in VSL tasks. Moreover, our findings support the beneficial impact of negative valence on VSL but also raise questions about its robustness. Taken together, our study provides a novel and significant insight into the role of image memorability in incidental visual memory and highlights the importance of considering memorability when testing the effect of emotional valence on learning and memory.

Steady-state evoked potentials research has provided significant insights into temporal dynamics of attentional processes. While these studies focused primarily on group-level inspection, there is a need for further research employing methodological approaches that enable the examination of individual-level variability, often linked to various cognitive and clinical outcomes. In the present study (n = 29), we aimed to measure and discern attentional shift processes, examining both group and individual subject dynamics. We utilized electroencephalographic frequency tagging to examine attentional engagement, disengagement, and reengagement while participants switched focus between four flickering stimuli. Analysis of ssVEPs revealed significant changes in amplitude between attentional conditions. Group-level results indicated an increase in activity during engagement with the first target, followed by a decrease upon disengagement, while reengagement with the second target showed a corresponding increase in activity occurring on average 110 ms prior to disengagement. Distinct individual patterns emerged, with participants showing either disengagement, reengagement, both, or no shifts. Notably, the timing and order of these attentional shifts varied considerably. These findings demonstrate the ability of this approach to quantify attentional shifts on both group and individual-level, providing a foundation for further research into individual differences in attentional control, with implications for understanding adaptive and maladaptive psychological functioning.

Postpartum Depression (PPD) and Childbirth Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CB-PTSD) are psychiatric conditions that cause significant distress. Yet despite their high prevalence and decades of research, knowledge about causal cognitive mechanisms that may assist in predicting or preventing these conditions is still missing. One characteristic of PPD and CB-PTSD that may contribute to their early prevention is the existence of cognitive biases concerning future parenting. Cognitive biases have been shown to play an important role in the etiology of various other psychiatric disorders, including depression and PTSD, suggesting they might have a similar role in PPD and CB-PTSD. From a theoretical perspective, understanding the associations between cognitive biases, PPD, and CB-PTSD may lead to novel theoretical models and research avenues. Additionally, understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying PPD and CB-PTSD has several important clinical implications, such as early detection, preventative care, and developing individually tailored cognitive therapies focusing on these specific biases.

An ongoing debate exists in the literature regarding the reliability of attention bias to threats. The current study directly examined how the interaction between available attention resources, personality traits, and stimuli visual characteristics moderates attention bias to task-irrelevant threatening stimuli. To this end, the current study conducted a comprehensive series of four experiments in which an emotional modification of the perceptual load task was employed. Participants with high and low fear of spiders, as well as participants diagnosed with arachnophobia, performed the task under high and low perceptual loads while ignoring task-irrelevant distracting spiders. As expected, all participants, regardless of fear level, were affected to some extent by the threatening distracting spider pictures, known to evoke threat due to their evolutionary value. However, the results show that high fear and phobia groups exhibit consistent attention bias to threats, depending on the threat’s ecological value. The low fear groups, on the other hand, showed a similar but weaker attention bias to threat, only when attentional resources were available.These results deomstratethe variance in individuals’ capacity to inhibit distracting threats and focus on current goals.

People naturally seek an interpersonal distance that feels comfortable, striking a balance between not being too close or too far from others until reaching a state of equilibrium. Previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences among autistic individuals have yielded inconsistent results. Some show a preference for greater distance, while others indicate a preference for shorter distances, or reveal higher variance in preferences among autistic individuals. In a related vein, previous studies have also investigated the way autistics accurately judge distance, and these studies have received inconsistent results, with some showing superior spatial abilities and others indicating biases in distance estimations. However, the link between distance estimation and preference has never been examined. To address this gap, our study measured interpersonal distance preferences and estimations and tested the correlation between the two factors. The results indicate greater variance among autistic people in both the preference of distance and the ability to estimate distance accurately, suggesting that inconsistencies in previous studies originate from greater individual differences among autistics. Furthermore, only among autistic individuals were interpersonal distance preference and estimation bias associated in a manner that violated equilibrium. Underestimation bias (judging others as closer than they are) was linked to a preference for closer proximity, while overestimation bias (judging others as further away) was associated with a preference for maintaining a greater distance. This connection suggests that biases in the estimation of interpersonal distance contribute to extreme preferences (being too close or too far away). Taken together, the findings suggest that biases in the estimation of interpersonal distance are associated with socially inappropriate distance preferences among autistics.

Since COVID-19 is easily transmitted among people in close physical proximity, the focus of epidemiological policy during the COVID-19 crisis included major restrictions on interpersonal distance. However, the way in which distance restrictions affected spatial perception is unclear. In the current study, we examined interpersonal distance preferences and perceptions at three time points: pre-pandemic, early post-pandemic, and late post-pandemic. The results indicate that following the pandemic outbreak, people perceived others as farther away than they actually were, suggesting that the distance restrictions were associated with an enlargement of perceived interpersonal distance. Interestingly, however, people maintained the same distance from one another as before the outbreak, indicating no change in actual distance behavior due to the risk of infection. These findings suggest that COVID-19 was associated with a change in the way distance is perceived, while in practice, people maintain the same distance as before. In contrast, COVID-related anxiety predicted both a preference for maintaining a greater distance and a bias toward underestimating perceived distance from others. Thus, individuals who were highly fearful of COVID-19 perceived other people to be closer than they actually were and preferred to maintain a larger distance from them. The results suggest that subjective risk can lead to an increased perception of danger and a subsequent change in behavior. Taken together, even when behaviors should logically change, the decision-making process can be based on distorted perceptions. This insight may be used to predict public compliance.

While executive functions (EFs) have traditionally been linked to the cerebral cortex, our understanding of EFs has evolved with increasing evidence pointing to the involvement of cortico-subcortical networks. Despite the importance of investigating EFs within this broader context, the functional contributions of subcortical regions to these processes remain largely unexplored. This study addresses this gap by specifically examining the involvement of subcortical regions in executive inhibition, as measured by the classic Eriksen flanker task. In this study, we used a stereoscope to differentiate between subcortical (monocular) and cortical (mostly binocular) visual pathways in EF processes. Our findings indicate that monocular visual pathways play a crucial role in representing executive conflict, which necessitates cortical involvement. The persistence of a monoptic advantage in conflict representation highlights the substantial contribution of subcortical regions to these executive processes. This exploration of subcortical involvement in executive inhibition provides valuable insights into the intricate relationships between cortical and subcortical regions in EFs.

Extracting regularities and probabilities from the environment is a fundamental and critical ability in an ever-changing surrounding. Previous findings showed that people are highly efficient in learning these regularities and that emotional stimuli are better learned than neutral ones. Yet, the generality and the underlying mechanism of this benefit are poorly understood. Here, participants viewed a stream of images with negative and neutral valence. Unbeknownst, the items recurred in regularity as triplets. Then, to assess learning, a surprised familiarity test was conducted. The results of Experiment 1, using two sets of stimuli, found better statistical learning for negative triplets than for neutral triplets. Experiment 2 revealed similar benefits even when only a single negative item was in the triplet at the second or third position, suggesting the advantage is not cumulative. We speculated that the predictability of the negative items is driving the effect. Consequently, Experiment 3 confirmed that the memory for neutral items preceding negative items was better than for neutral items preceding neutral items. Together, these findings provide novel insights into the mechanism of how the learning of incidental temporal associations is influenced by negative stimuli and the role of predictability in the negative valence benefit.

Introduction: Psychiatric evaluation of anxiety and depression is currently based on self-reported symptoms and their classification into discrete disorders. Yet the substantial overlap between these disorders as well as their within-disorder heterogeneity may contribute to the mediocre success rates of treatments. The proposed research examines a new framework for diagnosis that is based on alterations in underlying cognitive mechanisms. In line with the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach, the current study directly compares disorder-specific and transdiagnostic cognitive patterns in predicting the severity of anxiety and depression symptoms. Methods: The sample included 237 individuals exhibiting differing levels of anxiety and depression symptoms, as measured by the STAI-T and BDI-II. Random Forest regressors were used to analyze their performance on a battery of six computerized cognitive-behavioral tests targeting selective and spatial attention, expectancy, interpretation, memory, and cognitive control biases. Results: Unique anxiety-specific biases were found, as well as shared anxious-depressed bias patterns. These cognitive biases exhibited relatively high fitting rates when predicting symptom severity (questionnaire scores common range 0-60, MAE = 6.03, RMSE = 7.53). Interpretation and expectancy biases exhibited the highest association with symptoms, above all other individual biases. Limitations: Although internal validation methods were applied, models may suffer from potential overfitting due to sample size limitations. Conclusion: In the context of the ongoing dispute regarding symptom-centered versus transdiagnostic approaches, the current study provides a unique comparison of these two views, yielding a novel intermediate approach. The results support the use of mechanism-based dimensional diagnosis for adding precision and objectivity to future psychiatric evaluations.

The current registered report focused on the temporal dynamics of the relationship between expectancy and attention toward threat, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the prioritization of threat detection over expectancy. In the current event-related potentials experiment, a-priori expectancy was manipulated, and attention bias was measured, using a well-validated paradigm. A visual search array was presented, with one of two targets: spiders (threatening) or birds (neutral). A verbal cue stating the likelihood of encountering a target preceded the array, creating congruent and incongruent trials. Following cue presentation, preparatory processes were examined using the contingent negative variation (CNV) component. Following target presentation, two components were measured: early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP), reflecting early and late stages of natural selective attention toward emotional stimuli, respectively. Behaviorally, spiders were found faster than birds, and congruency effects emerged for both targets. For the CNV, a non-significant trend of more negative amplitudes following spider cues emerged. As expected, EPN and LPP amplitudes were larger for spider targets compared to bird targets. Data-driven, exploratory, topographical analyses revealed different patterns of activation for bird cues compared to spider cues. Furthermore, 400-500 ms post-target, a congruency effect was revealed only for bird targets. Together, these results demonstrate that while expectancy for spider appearance is evident in differential neural preparation, the actual appearance of spider target overrides this expectancy effect and only in later stages of processing does the cueing effect come again into play.

In the present study we aimed to measure and discern between attentional shift processes. We utilized the EEG frequency tagging technique in an experimental design that required participants to switch their attentional focus between four stimuli flickering at distinct frequencies. Through the analysis of steady-state visual-evoked potential (ssVEP) responses we were able to study the time course and temporal dynamics of different attentional shifts. Specifically, engagement with a to-be attended target, disengagement from a previously attended target and reengagement with a new target. Importantly, our experimental design and analysis allowed for measuring these processes not only on the group, but also on the individual subject level. On the group-level, both attentional disengagement and reengagement were evident, with the process of disengagement occurring prior to reengagement. Interestingly, on the individual subject level several distinct patterns of attentional shifts emerged: While a major portion of participants mirrored the group-level trend, in a subgroup of participants only attentional disengagement could be identified, in some only reengagement, and others showed no discernible shifts in ssVEP amplitude. Notably, the timing of these attentional shifts varied across individuals relative to target switch events. Echoing prior studies, our findings shed light on the independent and gradual nature of attentional shift processes and underscore the importance of examining these shifts at both the group and individual levels. Our study provides deeper insights into the neural mechanisms that drive attentional dynamics.### Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.

The ability to extract regularities from the environment is fundamental to both basic and higher-order cognitive functions. Previous findings showing that individuals are better able to remember emotional stimuli suggest that learning the regularities of emotional stimuli may be robust. Yet, little is known about how implicit learning is affected by emotional stimuli, and specifically by negative threatening stimuli. During the learning phase of a Visual Statistical Learning (VSL) task, participants viewed a stream of items with negative and neutral valence. They were unaware that the items recurred regularly as triplets. In a surprise recognition test followed the learning phase, participants were asked to judge which of two triplets—one real and the other a foil—was more familiar. The results of Experiment 1 indicated better statistical learning for negative triplets than for neutral triplets. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that the negative triplet’s advantage was independent of the number of negative items comprising it, suggesting that the enhanced learning of negative triplets is not driven by a cumulative effect. Instead, we speculated that participants were able to use preceding items across repeating triplets to predict the appearance of negative items. Experiment 3 showed that the advantage for negative triplets is driven by individual items within the triplets. Together, these experiments offer valuable insights into how implicit learning such as VSL is affected by negative stimuli.

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomenacan be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue “Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome”, we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomenacollectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research.

Introduction:Attention bias plays an important role in specific fears and phobias. Previous studies revealed that a-priori expectancies affect attention toward neutral stimuli but not threatening stimuli. The aim of the current study was to test whether this selective influence of expectancies on attention is specific to phylogenetic threat (i.e., spiders) or whether it can be generalized to ontogenetic threat (i.e., guns). Correspondingly, we directly compared expectancy effects on attentional allocation to phylogenetically vs. ontogenetically threatening stimuli. Method:Expectancies were manipulated by presenting a cue indicating the likelihood of the appearance of a deviant picture in a visual search array. The array included eight distractors and one neutral (phone/bird) or threatening (gun/spider) deviant picture. In a comprehensive design, we examined the effects of stimulus type (phylogenetic/ontogenetic) and visual background (white and sterile/complex and ecological). Individual differences such as intolerance of uncertainty and spider fear were also measured. Results:Results showed that attention bias toward spiders does not extend to threatening ontogenetic stimuli (i.e., guns). Our previous findings on attention bias toward spiders were replicated and a small to medium positive correlation was found between reaction time to bird targets and pre-existing fear of spider levels. Cues were used to detect threatening as well as neutral targets on both background types, except for spider targets on a complex background, replicating previous results. A small to medium positive correlation was also found between fear of spiders and intolerance of uncertainty. Discussion:Together, these results suggest that expectancy and attentional processes may differ between ontogenetic and phylogenetic threat. Importantly, the effects of expectancy on attentional allocation depend on an interaction between the type of threat (ontogenetic/phylogenetic), visual factors, and individual differences.