| 1. |
- Birmingham, Elina, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring emotional expression recognition in aging adults using the Moving Window Technique
- 2018
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 13:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Adult aging is associated with difficulties in recognizing negative facial expressions such as fear and anger. However, happiness and disgust recognition is generally found to be less affected. Eye-tracking studies indicate that the diagnostic features of fearful and angry faces are situated in the upper regions of the face (the eyes), and for happy and disgusted faces in the lower regions (nose and mouth). These studies also indicate age-differences in visual scanning behavior, suggesting a role for attention in emotion recognition deficits in older adults. However, because facial features can be processed extrafoveally, and expression recognition occurs rapidly, eye-tracking has been questioned as a measure of attention during emotion recognition. In this study, the Moving Window Technique (MWT) was used as an alternative to the conventional eye-tracking technology. By restricting the visual field to a moveable window, this technique provides a more direct measure of attention. We found a strong bias to explore the mouth across both age groups. Relative to young adults, older adults focused less on the left eye, and marginally more on the mouth and nose. Despite these different exploration patterns, older adults were most impaired in recognition accuracy for disgusted expressions. Correlation analysis revealed that among older adults, more mouth exploration was associated with faster recognition of both disgusted and happy expressions. As a whole, these findings suggest that in aging there are both attentional differences and perceptual deficits contributing to less accurate emotion recognition.
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| 2. |
- Brehmer, Yvonne, et al.
(författare)
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Neural correlates of training-related working-memory gains in old age
- 2011
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Ingår i: NeuroImage. - : Elsevier BV. - 1053-8119 .- 1095-9572. ; 58:4, s. 1110-1120
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Working memory (WM) functioning declines in old age. Due to its impact on many higher-order cognitive functions, investigating whether training can modify WM performance has recently been of great interest. We examined the relationship between behavioral performance and neural activity following five weeks of intensive WM training in 23 healthy older adults (M = 63.7 years). 12 participants received adaptive training (i.e. individually adjusted task difficulty to bring individuals to their performance maximum), whereas the others served as active controls (i.e. fixed low-level practice). Brain activity was measured before and after training, using fMRI, while subjects performed a WM task under two difficulty conditions. Although there were no training-related changes in WM during scanning, neocortical brain activity decreased post training and these decreases were larger in the adaptive training group than in the controls under high WM load. This pattern suggests intervention-related increases in neural efficiency. Further, there were disproportionate gains in the adaptive training group in trained as well as in non-trained (i.e. attention, episodic memory) tasks assessed outside the scanner, indicating the efficacy of the training regimen. Critically, the degree of training-related changes in brain activity (i.e. neocortical decreases and subcortical increases) was related to the maximum gain score achieved during the intervention period. This relationship suggests that the decreased activity, but also specific activity increases, observed were functionally relevant.
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| 3. |
- Bäckman, Lars, et al.
(författare)
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Dopamine D(1) receptors and age differences in brain activation during working memory
- 2011
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Ingår i: Neurobiology of Aging. - Fayetteville, N.Y : Elsevier. - 0197-4580 .- 1558-1497. ; 32:10, s. 1849-1856
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In an fMRI study, 20 younger and 20 healthy older adults were scanned while performing a spatial working-memory task under two levels of load. On a separate occasion, the same subjects underwent PET measurements using the radioligand [(11)C] SCH23390 to determine dopamine D(1) receptor binding potential (BP) in caudate nucleus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The fMRI study revealed a significant load modulation of brain activity (higher load>lower load) in frontal and parietal regions for younger, but not older, adults. The PET measurements showed marked age-related reductions of D(1) BP in caudate and DLPFC. Statistical control of caudate and DLPFC D(1) binding eliminated the age-related reduction in load-dependent BOLD signal in left frontal cortex, and attenuated greatly the reduction in right frontal and left parietal cortex. These findings suggest that age-related alterations in dopaminergic neurotransmission may contribute to underrecruitment of task-relevant brain regions during working-memory performance in old age.
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| 4. |
- Cortes, Diana, et al.
(författare)
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Age differences in judgments of attractiveness, likeability, and trustworthiness of faces
- 2016
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Ingår i: Program of SANS 2016. ; , s. 58-58
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- People constantly evaluate faces to obtain social information. However, the link between aging and social evaluation of faces is not well understood. Todorov and colleagues introduced a data-driven model defined by valence and dominance as the two main components underlying social judgments of faces. They also created a stimulus set consisting of computer-generated faces which systematically vary along various social dimensions (e.g., Todorov et al., 2013, Emotion, 13, 724-38). We utilized a selection of these facial stimuli to investigate age-related differences in judgments of the following dimensions: attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness. Participants rated how well the faces represented the intended social dimensions on 9-point scales ranging from not at all to extremely well. Results from 71 younger (YA; mean age = 23.42 years) and 60 older adults (OA; mean age = 69.19 years) showed that OA evaluated untrustworthy faces as more trustworthy, dislikeable faces as more likeable, and unattractive faces as more attractive compared to YA. OA also evaluated attractive faces as more attractive compared to YA, whereas YA did rate likeable and trustworthy faces as more likeable and trustworthy than did OA. In summary, our findings showed that OA evaluated negative social features less negatively compared to YA. This suggests that older and younger persons may use different cues for social evaluation of faces, and is in line with prior research suggesting age-related decline in the ability to recognize negative emotion expressions.
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| 5. |
- Cortes, Diana, et al.
(författare)
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Intranasal Oxytocin and Response Inhibition in Young and Older Adults
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In normal aging, people are confronted with impairment in both socioemotional and cognitive abilities. Specifically, there are age-related declines in inhibitory processes that regulate attention towards irrelevant material. In last years, the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has mainly been related to improvements in several domains such as emotion recognition and memory, but to date the effects of oxytocin in aging remain largely unknown. In a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated whether oxytocin facilitates inhibitory processing in older adults compared to younger adults. In total, 41 older adults (51% women; age range 65-75 years) and 37 younger adults (49% women; age range 20-30 years) participated in this study two times, receiving a single intranasal dose of 40 IU of placebo and oxytocin in randomized order 45 minutes before engaging in the task. Participants were tested approximately a month apart and mostly at the same hour during both occasions. Inhibition was measured with a Go/NoGo task which included happy and neutral faces as targets (Go stimuli) and distractors (NoGo stimuli) shown on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to press a button any time they saw a target and remain passive when encountering a distractor. Preliminary results indicate effects for happy and neutral faces, but only in the distractor condition. For happy distractors, women rejected correctly happy faces more accurately than men did, both in the placebo and oxytocin conditions. A main effect of age was observed for the neutral distractors, where older adults were more successful in inhibiting responses than younger adults during oxytocin and placebo treatments. We did not observe effects of oxytocin in the different tasks. The role of oxytocin was not clear distinguished in the tasks. In sum, our findings showed that age and gender can influence inhibition but their effects depend on the displayed emotions. This suggests that the ability to inhibit interfering distractors may remain intact despite of age and that deficits in inhibition may be selective. The role of oxytocin in inhibition needs to be further investigated since it is possible that it is context dependent.
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| 6. |
- Cortes, Diana S., et al.
(författare)
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Age-Related Differences in Evaluation of Social Attributes From Computer-Generated Faces of Varying Intensity
- 2019
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Ingår i: Psychology and Aging. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0882-7974 .- 1939-1498. ; 34:5, s. 686-697
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In everyday life throughout the life span, people frequently evaluate faces to obtain information crucial for social interactions. We investigated age-related differences in judgments of a wide range of social attributes based on facial appearance. Seventy-one younger and 60 older participants rated 196 computer-generated faces that systematically varied in facial features such as shape and reflectance to convey different intensity levels of seven social attributes (i.e., attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness). Older compared to younger participants consistently gave higher attractiveness ratings to faces representing both high and low levels of attractiveness. Older participants were also less sensitive to the likeability of faces and tended to evaluate faces representing low likeability as more likable. The age groups did, however, not differ substantially in their evaluations of the other social attributes. Results are in line with previous research showing that aging is associated with preference toward positive and away from negative information and extend this positivity effect to social perception of faces.
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| 7. |
- Cortes, Diana S., et al.
(författare)
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Effects of aging on emotion recognition from dynamic multimodal expressions and vocalizations
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Age-related differences in emotion recognition have predominantly been investigated using static pictures of facial expressions, and positive emotions beyond happiness have rarely been included. The current study instead used dynamic facial and vocal stimuli, and included a wider than usual range of positive emotions. In Task 1, younger and older adults were tested for their abilities to recognize 12 emotions from brief video recordings presented in visual, auditory, and multimodal blocks. Task 2 assessed recognition of 18 emotions conveyed by non-linguistic vocalizations (e.g., laughter, sobs, and sighs). Results from both tasks showed that younger adults had significantly higher overall recognition rates than older adults. In Task 1, significant group differences (younger > older) were only observed for the auditory block (across all emotions), and for expressions of anger, irritation, and relief (across all presentation blocks). In Task 2, significant group differences were observed for 6 out of 9 positive, and 8 out of 9 negative emotions. Overall, results indicate that recognition of both positive and negative emotions show age-related differences. This suggests that the age-related positivity effect in emotion recognition may become less evident when dynamic emotional stimuli are used and happiness is not the only positive emotion under study.
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| 8. |
- Cortes, Diana S., et al.
(författare)
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Increased dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activity to negative emotion displays in men but not in women
- 2019
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Ingår i: Program.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a prominentrole in social and emotional cognition. Findings suggest that exogenous intranasal oxytocin administration facilitates emotion recognition in humans, but individual and contextual differences may have moderating effects. A major caveat in this line of work is that it is predominantly based on young males, which limits current knowledge and potential for generalizability across gender. To uncover potential gender effects, the present study included younger and older men and women. Utilizing a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated the effects of a single-dose of 40 IUs intranasal oxytocin administration on emotion recognition of dynamic positive and negative stimuli in 32 men (mean age 45.78, sd. 22.87) and 39 women (mean 47.87, sd. 47.87), 40 minutes prior to MRI scanning. Preliminary analyses show that oxytocin induced brain activity reductions during exposure to negative (relative to positive) stimuli in women, while increasing brain activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in men. We speculate that the effects of oxytocin on emotion recognition may possibly be related to emotion regulation and mentalization processes, and that oxytocin is related to potential sex-differences in these processes. The results also raise concern that previous oxytocin literature on emotion recognition may be biased as there appears to be gender-differential effects of oxytocin on brain activity across adulthood that have been underestimated. In the next stage of the present study, we will investigate the interaction effects among treatment, sex, age, and presentation modality.
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| 9. |
- Cortes, Diana S., et al.
(författare)
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Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion
- 2017
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 12:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection (“remember” hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy.
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| 10. |
- Cortes, Diana S., et al.
(författare)
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Mixed support for a causal link between single dose intranasal oxytocin and spiritual experiences: opposing effects depending on individual proclivities for absorption
- 2018
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Ingår i: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1749-5016 .- 1749-5024. ; 13:9, s. 921-932
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Intranasal oxytocin (OT) has previously been found to increase spirituality, an effect moderated by OT-related genotypes. This pre-registered study sought to conceptually replicate and extend those findings. Using a single dose of intranasal OT vs placebo (PL), we investigated experimental treatment effects, and moderation by OT-related genotypes on spirituality, mystical experiences, and the sensed presence of a sentient being. A more exploratory aim was to test for interactions between treatment and the personality disposition absorption on these spirituality-related outcomes. A priming plus sensory deprivation procedure that has facilitated spiritual experiences in previous studies was used. The sample (N = 116) contained both sexes and was drawn from a relatively secular context. Results failed to conceptually replicate both the main effects of treatment and the treatment by genotype interactions on spirituality. Similarly, there were no such effects on mystical experiences or sensed presence. However, the data suggested an interaction between treatment and absorption. Relative to PL, OT seemed to enhance spiritual experiences in participants scoring low in absorption and dampen spirituality in participants scoring high in absorption.
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