Sex Differences in Orienting to Pictures with and without Humans: Evidence from the Cardiac Evoked Response (ECR) and the Cortical Long Latency Parietal Positivity (LPP)

Althaus, Monika; Groen, Yvonne; Schaft, Lutske van der; Minderaa, Ruud B.; Tucha, Oliver; Mulder, L.J.M.; Wijers, A.A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108224

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…Participants watched a series of 414 photographs that had been selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) (Lang et al 2008 ), representing the following conditions: neutral, positive or negative emotions in scenes with humans (socially relevant conditions); or neutral, positive or negative emotions in scenes without humans (socially irrelevant conditions, see Groen et al ( 2013 ) or Althaus et al ( 2014 , 2015 )). By using E-prime 2.0, the pictures were serially presented for 1 s with a variable inter-stimulus interval of 3 to 5 s and required no response.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, by using SPSS, for each participant, the maximal cardiac deceleration was determined in the interval from −0.5 to 4 s (IBI MAX ). For the validity of this measure, we refer to Althaus et al ( 2014 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…a late long lasting parietal positivity (LPP). Both types of responses, in particular to the pictures with humans, have previously been shown to discriminate between men and women (Proverbio et al 2009 ; Groen et al 2013 ; Althaus et al 2014 ) and to correlate with empathy-related questionnaire measures (Groen et al 2013 ; Althaus et al 2014 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do blood plasma levels of oxytocin moderate the effect of nasally administered oxytocin on social orienting in high-functioning male adults with autism spectrum disorder?

et al. 2016

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ObjectiveThe study investigated whether baseline plasma oxytocin (OXT) concentrations might moderate the effects of nasally administered OXT on social orienting.MethodsThirty-one males with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and thirty healthy males participated in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial. After administration of the compound, participants were viewing pictures from the International Affective Picture System that represented a systematic variation of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral scenes with and without humans. The outcome measures were a cardiac evoked response (ECR) and a cortical evoked long latency parietal positivity (LPP).ResultsMales with ASD had significantly higher plasma baseline levels than the controls. In the absence of general treatment effects, higher baseline concentrations were found to be associated with larger treatment effects, particularly in the group of males with ASD. Higher post-treatment plasma OXT concentrations were found to be associated with smaller treatment effects and larger orienting responses in the placebo situation in the group of controls.ConclusionsWe interpret our findings as suggesting that it is the central availability of OXT determining how much of the nasally administered OXT will become centrally absorbed and how much of it will become released into the bloodstream.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do blood plasma levels of oxytocin moderate the effect of nasally administered oxytocin on social orienting in high-functioning male adults with autism spectrum disorder?

et al. 2016

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“…Previous studies reported significant effects of the social content (human vs. non-human) of emotional stimuli on the reactivity at central level, through evoked potential analysis ( Proverbio et al, 2009 ; Groen et al, 2013 ) and at peripheral level, through autonomic measures ( Althaus et al, 2014 ; Singleton et al, 2014 ). This social effect has been related to an automatic attentional affective processing, which facilitates the empathy ( Proverbio et al, 2009 ; Groen et al, 2013 ) or social abilities ( Althaus et al, 2014 ; Singleton et al, 2014 ). In this line, Singleton et al (2014) , found higher values of SCRs for social relevant stimulus than for those without social relevance, in healthy participants scoring high in autistic symptoms scale.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomic Reactivity to Arousing Stimuli with Social and Non-social Relevance in Alexithymia

et al. 2017

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Emotional difficulties in alexithymia and their social consequences have been linked to alterations in autonomic nervous system. However, most of previous studies did not take into account the distinction between the affective and the cognitive dimensions of the alexithymia, leading to inconsistent results.Aim: In this study, we compared the effects of both dimensions of alexithymia on the autonomic arousal to emotional and social visual stimulations.Methods: Skin conductance responses (SCRs) to items of the International Affective Pictures System characterized by emotional (unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant), social (with humans) or non-social (without humans) content were recorded in non-alexithymic (NA), affective (AA) and cognitive alexithymic (CA) participants, selected on the basis of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire. All participants responded to questionnaires of empathy, social phobia, depression, and anxiety before the experiment and evaluated the arousal of the pictures after it.Results: Cognitive alexithymic group showed lower amplitudes of SCRs to pictures with social than without social relevance whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the NA group. Arousal emotional effects of the pictures on SCRs did not differ among groups. In addition, CA participants showed lower scores than NA in the Personal Taking sub-scale of the empathy questionnaire, while AA showed lower scores than NA in the fantasy sub-scale. The CA group showed higher social phobia, depression and anxiety scores, than the other two groups.Conclusion: This work has two original outcomes: first, affective alexithymics expressed lower empathic affective scores than other groups; second, alexithymia modulated the impact of the social relevance of the stimuli on the autonomic reactivity, this impact vanishing in affective alexithymics and reversing in cognitive alexithymics. Thus, though the groups could not be distinguished on the basis of emotional effect on SCRs, they clearly differed when the empathic characteristics and the autonomic impact of social relevance were considered. Finally, the described autonomic signature to social relevant information could contribute to elucidate the difficulty of alexithymics to deal with emotions during social transactions.

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“…Also, children's gender was considered as a possible significant factor in modulating emotional responses. In fact, many previous studies have reported consistent evidence of sex differences in emotional reactivity to affective pictures, with women generally showing stronger physiological reactions to especially negative, aversive pictures (Althaus et al, 2014) and more distress to fearful and stressful experiences (Kudielka, Buske-Kirschbaum, Hellhammer, & Kirschbaum, 2004). Such effects have also been replicated in laboratory ecological stress-related tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Mirroring the emotions of others by autonomic system: intra-species effect in children

Vanutelli¹,

Venturella²,

Angioletti³

et al. 2017

Neuropsychological Trends

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Previous research investigated the presence of differential autonomic responses towards the emotions expressed by individuals from ingroup or outgroup contexts. Results found increased affective reactions and typical identification bias that can be explained, according to "the similarity factor", as the tendency to tune stronger with those perceived as more similar. Then, few previous studies explored the presence of such mechanisms in intra and interspecies contexts. However, further investigation is needed to better explore these issues in developmental samples and to different emotionally valenced stimuli. Thus, we asked 30 children to watch emotional pictures involving child-child (CC) and child-animal (CA) interactions with negative, positive, or neutral valence. Autonomic responses were recorded and compared across species and gender. Results showed a higher sensitivity to intraspecies emotional valence (increased heart rate for negative compared to neutral stimuli) which was visible only in the female group, thus confirming the presence of a gender effect.

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Sex Differences in Orienting to Pictures with and without Humans: Evidence from the Cardiac Evoked Response (ECR) and the Cortical Long Latency Parietal Positivity (LPP)

Cited by 13 publications

References 38 publications

Do blood plasma levels of oxytocin moderate the effect of nasally administered oxytocin on social orienting in high-functioning male adults with autism spectrum disorder?

Do blood plasma levels of oxytocin moderate the effect of nasally administered oxytocin on social orienting in high-functioning male adults with autism spectrum disorder?

Autonomic Reactivity to Arousing Stimuli with Social and Non-social Relevance in Alexithymia

Mirroring the emotions of others by autonomic system: intra-species effect in children

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