We present a publicly available dataset of 227 healthy participants comprising a young (N=153, 25.1±3.1 years, range 20–35 years, 45 female) and an elderly group (N=74, 67.6±4.7 years, range 59–77 years, 37 female) acquired cross-sectionally in Leipzig, Germany, between 2013 and 2015 to study mind-body-emotion interactions. During a two-day assessment, participants completed MRI at 3 Tesla (resting-state fMRI, quantitative T1 (MP2RAGE), T2-weighted, FLAIR, SWI/QSM, DWI) and a 62-channel EEG experiment at rest. During task-free resting-state fMRI, cardiovascular measures (blood pressure, heart rate, pulse, respiration) were continuously acquired. Anthropometrics, blood samples, and urine drug tests were obtained. Psychiatric symptoms were identified with Standardized Clinical Interview for DSM IV (SCID-I), Hamilton Depression Scale, and Borderline Symptoms List. Psychological assessment comprised 6 cognitive tests as well as 21 questionnaires related to emotional behavior, personality traits and tendencies, eating behavior, and addictive behavior. We provide information on study design, methods, and details of the data. This dataset is part of the larger MPI Leipzig Mind-Brain-Body database.

The authors examined effects of aesthetic emotions in art appreciation. Subjects were presented three groups of slides of cubistic paintings that differed in their processing fluency. In an explicit classification procedure, subjects were asked to indicate by button press the moment when they recognized any depicted object in the painting. The time to recognize a depicted object was shortest for high processing fluency paintings, which were also rated higher in their preference. This is in accordance with the "hedonic fluency model" that predicts higher processing fluency being associated with positive aesthetic emotions in art appreciation (Reber, Schwartz, & Winkielman, 2004). In addition, higher processing fluency was associated with increased pupil dilations following the point of explicit classification. The finding of higher pupil dilation associated with easy-to-process stimuli is interpreted as reflecting aspects of aesthetic emotions that follow explicit classification of art stimuli as proposed in the "model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments" (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004).

Perception is substantially facilitated by top-down influences, typically seen as predictions. Here, we outline that the process is competitive in nature, in that sensory input initially activates multiple possible interpretations, or perceptual hypotheses, of its causes. This raises the question of how the selection of the correct interpretation from among those multiple hypotheses is achieved. We first review previous findings in support of such a competitive nature of perceptual processing, and then propose which neural regions might provide a platform for rising and using expectations to resolve this competition. Specifically, we propose that it is the rapid extraction and top-down dissemination of a global context signal from the frontal cortices, particularly the orbitofrontal cortex, that affords the quick and reliable resolution of the initial competition among likely alternatives toward a singular percept.

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Bayesian models are currently a dominant framework for describing human information processing. However, it is not clear yet how major tenets of this framework can be translated to brain processes. In this study, we addressed the neural underpinning of prior probability and its effect on anticipatory activity in category-specific areas. Before fMRI scanning, participants were trained in two behavioral sessions to learn the prior probability and correct order of visual events within a sequence. The events of each sequence included two different presentations of a geometric shape and one picture of either a house or a face, which appeared with either a high or a low likelihood. Each sequence was preceded by a cue that gave participants probabilistic information about which items to expect next. This allowed examining cue-related anticipatory modulation of activity as a function of prior probability in category-specific areas (fusiform face area and parahippocampal place area). Our findings show that activity in the fusiform face area was higher when faces had a higher prior probability. The finding of a difference between levels of expectations is consistent with graded, probabilistically modulated activity, but the data do not rule out the alternative explanation of a categorical neural response. Importantly, these differences were only visible during anticipation, and vanished at the time of stimulus presentation, calling for a functional distinction when considering the effects of prior probability. Finally, there were no anticipatory effects for houses in the parahippocampal place area, suggesting sensitivity to stimulus material when looking at effects of prediction.

There is ample evidence that the brain generates predictions that help interpret sensory input. To build such predictions the brain capitalizes upon learned statistical regularities and associations (e.g., "A" is followed by "B"; "C" appears together with "D"). The centrality of predictions to mental activities gave rise to the hypothesis that associative information with predictive value is perceived as intrinsically valuable. Such value would ensure that this information is proactively searched for, thereby promoting certainty and stability in our environment. We therefore tested here whether, all else being equal, participants would prefer stimuli that contained more rather than less associative information. In Experiments 1 and 2 we used novel, meaningless visual shapes and showed that participants preferred associative shapes over shapes that had not been associated with other shapes during training. In Experiment 3 we used pictures of real-world objects and again demonstrated a preference for stimuli that elicit stronger associations. These results support our proposal that predictive information is affectively tagged, and enhance our understanding of the formation of everyday preferences.

Many tasks in our daily life demand not only the use of different fingers of one hand in a serial fashion, but also to alternate from one hand to the other. Here, we investigated performance in a bimanual serial reaction time task (SRTT) with particular emphasis on learning-related changes in reaction time (RT) for consecutive button presses for homologous index- and middle fingers. The bimanual SRTT consisted of sequential button presses either with the left or right index- and middle-finger to a series of visual letters displayed on a computer screen. Each letter was assigned a specific button press with one of four fingers. Two outcome measures were investigated: (a) global sequence learning as defined by the time needed to complete a 15-letter SRTT sequence and (b) changes in hand switch costs across learning. We found that bimanual SRTT resulted in a global decrease in RT during the time course of learning that persisted for at least two weeks. Furthermore, RT to a button press showed an increase when the previous button press was associated with another hand as opposed to the same hand. This increase in RT was defined as switch costs. Hand switch costs significantly decreased during the time course of learning, and remained stable over a time of approximately two weeks. This study provides evidence for modulations of switch costs during bimanual sequence learning, a finding that might have important implications for theories of bimanual coordination and learning.

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