Biomedical subjects

Alfred W Kaszniak

Publications and source records attributed to Alfred W Kaszniak.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Awareness of subtle emotional feelings: a comparison of long-term meditators and nonmeditators.

The authors explored whether meditation training to enhance emotional awareness improves discrimination of subtle emotional feelings hypothesized to guide decision-making. Long-term meditators and nonmeditators were compared on measures of self-reported valence and arousal, skin conductance response (SCR), and facial electromyography (EMG) to masked and nonmasked emotional pictures, and on measures of heartbeat detection and self-reported emotional awareness. Groups responded similarly to nonmasked pictures. In the masked condition, only controls showed discrimination in valence self-reports. However, meditators reported greater emotional clarity than controls, and meditators with higher clarity had reduced arousal and improved valence discrimination in the masked condition. These findings provide qualified support for the somatic marker hypothesis and suggest that meditation may influence how emotionally ambiguous information is processed, regulated, and represented in conscious awareness.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Metamemory experiments in neurological populations: a review.

Metamemory refers to knowledge about one's memory capabilities and strategies that can aid memory, as well as the processes involved in memory self-monitoring. Although metamemory has been studied in cognitive psychology for several decades, there have been fewer studies investigating the neuropsychology of metamemory. In recent years, a growing number of studies of neurological patient groups have been conducted in order to investigate the neural correlates of metamemory. In this review, we examine the neuropsychological evidence that the frontal lobes are critically involved in monitoring and control processes, which are the central components of metamemory. The following conclusions are drawn from this literature: (1) There is a strong correlation between indices of frontal lobe function or structural integrity and metamemory accuracy (2) The combination of frontal lobe dysfunction and poor memory severely impairs metamemorial processes (3) Metamemory tasks vary in subject performance levels, and quite likely, in the underlying processes these different tasks measure, and (4) Metamemory, as measured by experimental tasks, may dissociate from basic memory retrieval processes and from global judgments of memory.

Frontal Lobe↗

PubMed2005

Emotional disclosure for whom? A study of vagal tone in bereavement.

Recent investigations have shown little evidence that written disclosure benefits bereaved individuals over a control condition. The present study hypothesized that the effectiveness of written disclosure for bereavement may be moderated by vagal tone, as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Vagal tone has been identified as an important individual difference in depression. The present study investigated 35 bereaved participants in a longitudinal design, with participants writing each week for 3 weeks, and then participating in follow-up sessions 1 week and 1 month later. As with previous studies, bereaved participants showed improvement, although no differential improvement was seen in the emotional Disclosure group compared to a Control writing group. As hypothesized, however, those participants with the highest RSA benefited most from the written disclosure, while RSA level did not predict outcome in the control condition. Future research should investigate whether vagal tone moderates the impact of written disclosure for non-bereaved individuals.

Affect↗

PubMed2005

EEG phase synchrony differences across visual perception conditions may depend on recording and analysis methods.

OBJECTIVE: (1) To investigate the neural synchrony hypothesis by examining if there was more synchrony for upright than inverted Mooney faces, replicating a previous study; (2) to investigate whether inverted stimuli evoke neural synchrony by comparing them to a new scrambled control condition, less likely to produce face perception. METHODS: Multichannel EEG was recorded via nose reference while participants viewed upright, inverted, and scrambled Mooney face stimuli. Gamma-range spectral power and inter-electrode phase synchrony were calculated via a wavelet-based method for upright stimuli perceived as faces and inverted/scrambled stimuli perceived as non-faces. RESULTS: When the frequency of interest was selected from the upright condition exhibiting maximal spectral power responses (as in the previous study) greater phase synchrony was found in the upright than inverted/scrambled conditions. However, substantial synchrony was present in all conditions, suggesting that choosing the frequency of interest from the upright condition only may have been biased. In addition, artifacts related to nose reference contamination by micro-saccades were found to be differentially present across experimental conditions in the raw EEG. When frequency of interest was selected instead from each experimental condition and the data were transformed to a laplacian 'reference free' derivation, the between-condition phase synchrony differences disappeared. Spectral power differences were robust to the change in reference, but not the combined changes in reference and frequency selection criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Synchrony differences between face/non-face perceptions depend upon frequency selection and recording reference. Optimal selection of these parameters abolishes differential synchrony between conditions. SIGNIFICANCE: Neural synchrony is present not just for face percepts for upright stimuli, but also for non-face percepts achieved for inverted/scrambled Mooney stimuli.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Metamemory for faces following frontal lobe damage.

Previous research has provided evidence of metamemory impairments in patients with frontal lobe damage on verbal episodic memory tasks. In the present study, we employed metamemory paradigms to investigate whether patients with frontal lesions show monitoring deficits on semantic memory tasks involving facial stimuli. Patients with frontal lobe damage and healthy control subjects made memory decisions to famous faces in a retrospective confidence judgment task and in a prospective feeling-of-knowing (FOK) task. Results indicated that frontal patients performed worse than controls on the retrospective confidence task, but there were no differences between the groups on the FOK task. These findings suggest that metamemory deficits in frontal patients are not confined to specific stimulus domains (words vs. faces) or memory systems (episodic vs. semantic). In addition, the dissociation between retrospective confidence judgments and FOK accuracy documented in this study and also in a recent report by Schnyer et al. suggesting that metamemory should not be considered a unitary function with a single neuroanatomic substrate.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Extending neuropsychological assessments into the primary mental ability space.

A battery of 17 neuropsychological tests (including the CERAD battery) and 17 psychometric ability tests were administered to a sample of 499 participants of the Seattle Longitudinal study who had been given the psychometric ability tests seven and 14 years earlier. The neuropsychological tests were projected into a 5-factor psychometric ability space by means of extension analysis. The concurrent regressions of the neuropsychology tests on the psychometric ability tests were then used to estimate neuropsychology test scores from the psychometric ability tests administered in 1984, 1991 and 1998. Neuropsychologists then rated the study participants as either normal, suspect or cognitively impaired in 1998. Changes in estimated test scores were computed over seven and fourteen years. Significant odds ratios between normal and cognitively impaired groups were found for all neuropsychological tests over the proximal period and for most tests over the 14-year period. Similar findings occurred for the odds ratios between the normal and suspect groups for the most proximal 7-year changes.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

A role for right medial prefontal cortex in accurate feeling-of-knowing judgements: evidence from patients with lesions to frontal cortex.

The hypothesis that prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in accurate predictions of episodic memory performance was tested using the feeling-of-knowing (FOK) paradigm. Fourteen patients with a broad spectrum of damage to the frontal cortex and matched controls read sentences and later were tested for recall memory, confidence judgments, and FOK accuracy using as cues the sentences with the final word missing. While frontal patients were impaired at recall and recognition memory, they were able to make accurate confidence judgments about their recall attempts. By contrast, as a group, the patients were markedly impaired in the accuracy of their prospective FOK judgments. Lesion analysis of frontal patients with clear FOK impairment revealed an overlapping region of damage in right medial prefrontal cortex. These findings provide functional and anatomical evidence for a dissociation between recall confidence and prospective memory monitoring and are discussed in terms of familiarity and access theories of FOK predictions.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Bilateral hippocampal volume predicts verbal memory function in temporal lobe epilepsy.

The present study used quantitative volume estimates of the hippocampus based on structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict memory performance of individuals with epilepsy of temporal lobe origin (TLE). Twenty individuals with TLE completed standardized neuropsychological tests and a quality of life inventory, and participated in a brain MRI protocol designed to obtain high-resolution images of the hippocampus. The combined volume of the left and right hippocampi was found to be the best predictor of objective verbal memory performance. This finding is consistent with the functional adequacy model of hippocampal function. In contrast, the asymmetry between right and left hippocampal volume was the best predictor of subjective ratings of cognitive functioning, which is consistent with the functional reserve model. The collective and complementary functions of the left and right hippocampi merit further exploration in prospective studies of memory function and TLE.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Autonomic and emotion regulation in bereavement and depression.

OBJECTIVES: Prior research suggests important differences between depression and the depressed feelings experienced in the context of bereavement, despite some overlap. Differences include an increase in restlessness, suggesting underlying physiological differences between the groups. METHOD: This study examined the level of depressive symptoms, heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV), and coping style of 10 bereaved, 10 depressed, and 10 control participants. RESULTS: Bereaved participants showed significantly higher HR than either depressed or control participants, while there were no such differences in HRV. Level of depression in the bereaved group correlated negatively with HRV. Additional analyses showed that the use of passive coping had a marginally significant negative correlation with HRV in bereaved subjects. CONCLUSION: The present data suggest that differences in HR and HRV could be associated with increased cardiovascular fatalities in bereaved individuals, known as the "broken heart phenomenon." These physiological differences have potential implications for both the mental and physical health of the bereaved.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Emotional experience and facial expression in Alzheimer's disease.

Emotional experiences and facial muscle activity of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (n = 13) and healthy elderly control subjects (n = 21) were measured while viewing emotion-eliciting images. Alzheimer's disease and control groups rated their emotional experiences similarly and in the expected directions on dimensions of valence and arousal. Change in corrugator activity while viewing images, compared to baseline, was comparable across groups and was greatest while viewing negative images. Change in zygomatic activity, however, was significantly different between AD and control groups, with AD subjects demonstrating an inverted pattern of activity compared to controls. These findings are discussed as possible consequences of frontal cortical system involvement accompanying the disease process.

Aged↗