| 1. |
- Abgrall, N., et al.
(author)
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The large enriched germanium experiment for neutrinoless double beta decay (LEGEND)
- 2017
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In: AIP Conference Proceedings. - : Author(s). - 1551-7616 .- 0094-243X. ; 1894
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) would show that lepton number is violated, reveal that neu-trinos are Majorana particles, and provide information on neutrino mass. A discovery-capable experiment covering the inverted ordering region, with effective Majorana neutrino masses of 15 - 50 meV, will require a tonne-scale experiment with excellent energy resolution and extremely low backgrounds, at the level of ∼0.1 count /(FWHM·t·yr) in the region of the signal. The current generation 76Ge experiments GERDA and the Majorana Demonstrator, utilizing high purity Germanium detectors with an intrinsic energy resolution of 0.12%, have achieved the lowest backgrounds by over an order of magnitude in the 0νββ signal region of all 0νββ experiments. Building on this success, the LEGEND collaboration has been formed to pursue a tonne-scale 76Ge experiment. The collaboration aims to develop a phased 0νββ experimental program with discovery potential at a half-life approaching or at 1028 years, using existing resources as appropriate to expedite physics results.
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| 2. |
- Cortes, Diana, et al.
(author)
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Intranasal Oxytocin and Response Inhibition in Young and Older Adults
- 2017
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)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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| 3. |
- Cortes, Diana S., et al.
(author)
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Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion
- 2017
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In: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 12:6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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| 4. |
- Fischer, Martin, et al.
(author)
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SPASS : Strengthen Performance Active Safety Simulator
- 2017
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the SPASS project was to evaluate early development/rapid prototyping of new driver assistance systems by utilizing an advanced driving simulator in combination with a vehicle electrical architecture (including sensors, actuators and HMI). As a case study, the project demonstrated a novel active safety function which was rather well penetrated at Volvo Car Corporation (VCC), i.e. VCC had reference vehicles up and running. The project used VTI’s advanced driving simulator (Sim IV) in Gothenburg to establish a simulator platform for evaluation of driver-system interaction. The objective was to understand the capability of Sim IV when studying active safety functions requiring interaction between road infrastructure, sensors, electrical architecture, actuators and Human-Machine Interaction, and to understand how useful Sim IV is during the ordinary concept development phase at vehicle manufacturers. Warning systems that act when the driver is on the way to unintentionally leave the lane are already available today. The next generation of systems will not only warn the driver but will actively contribute to the steering task. One such system is VCC’s eLKA (emergency lane keeping assistance). As part of the SPASS project a scenario which lead to triggering of the eLKA function was developed and tested. The scenario consisted of rural road driving where drivers were distracted by means of a visual distraction task (reading numbers from a screen, placed at a relative large down angle relative to the view of the forward roadway) and then poured across the median towards an oncoming vehicle by introducing an additional steering angle in the simulated vehicle. An integrated test environment for active safety functions has been developed and evaluated. VCC’s emergency lane keeping assistance system (eLKA) has been used as test case in the evaluation, and the functioning of the eLKA has been validated and approved by experts at VCC.
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| 5. |
- Frazier, I., et al.
(author)
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Older Adults Show More Trust Than Younger Adults Post-Betrayal in Trust/Lottery Game
- 2017
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Older adults comprise both the fastest growing population segment in industrialized nations and the majority of political and industry leaders. Regardless of social status, older adults face a constant flow of highly consequential decisions. These decisions are often social in nature, even when they primarily concern health, finance, or politics; in particular, they often require putting trust in others. However, older adults’ social decision making processes relating to trust have not been well researched yet. Trust is an important aspect of maintaining social supports and maintenance of social supports is health protective. This is of particular concern in older adults as aging is linked to increased social loss, isolation, and loneliness. Evidence has indicated that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) is linked to several aspects of socioemotional functioning including trust. There is emerging evidence of a possible deficit in OT in older, specifically male, adults. Intranasally administered OT before a trust game has resulted in young adults acting in a more trusting, but not gullible manner. However, the potential effects of OT administration on trust game performance in older adults is unknown. We compared older (N = 54, 56% female) and younger adults’ (N = 48, 48% female) performance on a Trust/Lottery game after intranasal administration of either OT or placebo (P). Participants played the role of investors with ostensible same age social partners (trust) or a computer (lottery). At the beginning of each game investors received monetary units to invest in increments. They were instructed that if money was sent it would be tripled and then the investee (ostensible social partner) would be able to send an amount, or none, back or the lottery would be played (in the lottery condition). The probabilities of the trustee returning behavior in both the trust and lottery conditions were drawn from the same probability distributions, thus the participants faced the same objective risk but only interacted socially in the trust condition. Twelve trust and 12 lottery games were played in a pseudo-randomly, counterbalanced fashion. After half of the trust and lottery trials were played, a feedback screen was presented informing participants that in both the trust and lottery conditions only 50% of their investments bore returns, signifying 50% chance of trust breach or lottery success. While no effects of OT were detected, trust trials older adults increased their investments post betrayal while younger adults decreased their investments (F = 5.53, p = .021). No such differences were found in the lottery game. These results may indicate that older adults are more forgiving of breaching trust than younger adults. However, these results may also indicate vulnerability to being taken advantage of in a social context. To address these interpretations, research examining older adults’ goals in social decision making contexts is warranted.
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| 6. |
- Gerhardsson, Andreas, et al.
(author)
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Emotional working memory in older adults after total sleep deprivation
- 2017
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In: Sleep Medicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 1389-9457 .- 1878-5506. ; 40:Suppl. 1, s. e110-e110
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Introduction: Even though the occurrence of sleep problems increases with age, few studies have focused on the cognitive effects of acute sleep deprivation in elderly. Most previous research indicate that, compared to young, older adults show less impairment in e.g. attention after sleep deprivation. However, little is known of whether the same pattern holds for higher cognitive functions. In addition, while old age is usually related to a general decrease in working memory abilities, performance on working memory tasks may differ depending on the emotional valence of the stimuli, where positive stimuli seem to be beneficial for working memory performance in older adults. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on emotional working memory in older adults using two levels of working memory load.Materials and methods: A healthy sample of 48 old adults (MAge=66.69 years, SDAge=3.44 years) was randomized into a total sleep deprivation group (TSD; n=24) or a sleep control group (SC; n=24). They performed a working memory task (n-back) containing positive, negative and neutral pictures in a low (1-back) and a high (3-back) working memory load condition. Performance was measured as Accuracy (d'), Omissions and Reaction Time (RT).Results: For the d' and Omissions we performed two separate 2x2x3 (sleep, working memory load, valence) repeated measures analyses of variance (rmANOVA). For the RTs, we applied a mixed-effects model. For both d' and RT we found no effect of sleep deprivation (Ps > .05). For valence, we found main effects on both d' (F1,46 = 5.56, P=.005) and RT (F1,95.7 = 4.84, P=.01). d' did not differ for positive and neutral pictures, but was in both cases significantly better than for negative pictures. RTs were significantly faster for positive pictures. However, a working memory load∗valence interaction (F1,95.7 = 4.50, P=.01) further revealed an effect of valence in the low, but not in the high load condition. In the low load condition, RTs were faster for positive than for neutral pictures and faster for neutral than for negative pictures. There was no significant effect of Omissions.Conclusions: Our results showed that emotional working memory performance was not significantly affected by one night of sleep deprivation in older adults, which contrast what we found in a sample of young adults from the same project. In line with previous research, our results indicate a beneficial effect of positive stimuli on working memory in older adults. This effect was present in both groups and most pronounced for reaction times in the condition with a lower cognitive demand. We can conclude that, among older adults, the working memory performance is not impaired by sleep deprivation and that the benefits of positive stimuli on working memory seem intact. These findings contribute to a better understanding of older adults' cognitive functioning after sleep deprivation.
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| 7. |
- Gulliford, Desiree, et al.
(author)
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Gender-differential effects of intranasal oxytocin on resting-state anterior cingulate activity
- 2017
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Introduction: As individuals age, there is an increased focus on social relationships (Carstensen, 2006). However, age-related changes in the brain can interfere with social functioning (Ebner, et al, 2012; Mather, et al, 2005; Ruffman, et al, 2008). While age-related changes in cognition are well studied, social-cognitive changes in aging are still underinvestigated, especially the brain mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. The administration of intranasal oxytocin (OT) has the potential to modulate social cognition (De Dreu, 2014) by altering BOLD signal in regions of the social brain (eg. amygdala and vmPFC) (Ebner, et al, 2016). Currently, there is very little known about the role of OT in human development in aging (Campbell, et al, 2014; Huffmeijer, et al, 2012). Methods: 40 young (18–31 years, 50% female) and 39 older (63–81 years, 59% female) were randomly assigned (in a double-blind design) to self-administer either 24 UIs of intranasal OT or placebo (P) 70-90 minutes prior to resting-state fMRI. T1-weighted anatomical reference images, using an MP-RAGE sequence (sagittal plane, FOV = 240 mm × 240 mm × 170; 1 × 1 × 1 mm isotropic voxels), and functional gradient-echo-planar imaging (EPI) data, during an open-eye, white cross-hair on black background, 8 minute resting-state scan (38 interleaved slices, TR 2 sec, TE 30 msec, FOV 252 × 252 × 133 mm, 80 × 80 × 38 mm matrix, flip angle 90°, in plane resolution of 3.15 × 3.15 mm, slice thickness 3.5 mm, 0 mm skip), were acquired with a 3T Philips Achieva MR Scanner using a 32-channel head coil. Preprocessing, including slice time correction, motion correction with artifact rejection, spatial normalization, and smoothing with an 8 mm Gaussian kernel, were implemented with Functional Connectivity Toolbox (Whitfield-Gabrieli, et al, 2012; http://www.nitrc.org/projects/conn/). Results: Younger individuals showed significantly greater overall anterior cingulate (AC) activity in P condition (p=.044). Intranasal OT administration significantly increased activity in the AC in both younger and older women (p=.024), but not men, when compared to P. The effect was slightly greater in older women than younger, but this effect was not significant potentially due to sample size.There were no significant gender effects in AC activity during rest between males and females in either younger or older P control groups. Conclusions: Intranasal OT has differential gender effects on AC activity during resting-state, increasing activity in women but not men. Additionally, there is evidence for age differences in overall AC activity at rest.
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| 8. |
- Holding, Benjamin C., et al.
(author)
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Multimodal Emotion Recognition Is Resilient to Insufficient Sleep : Results From Cross-Sectional and Experimental Studies
- 2017
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In: Sleep. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0161-8105 .- 1550-9109. ; 40:11
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Objectives: Insufficient sleep has been associated with impaired recognition of facial emotions. However, previous studies have found inconsistent results, potentially stemming from the type of static picture task used. We therefore examined whether insufficient sleep was associated with decreased emotion recognition ability in two separate studies using a dynamic multimodal task.Methods: Study 1 used a cross-sectional design consisting of 291 participants with questionnaire measures assessing sleep duration and self-reported sleep quality for the previous night. Study 2 used an experimental design involving 181 participants where individuals were quasi-randomized into either a sleep-deprivation (N = 90) or a sleep-control (N = 91) condition. All participants from both studies were tested on the same forced-choice multimodal test of emotion recognition to assess the accuracy of emotion categorization.Results: Sleep duration, self-reported sleep quality (study 1), and sleep deprivation (study 2) did not predict overall emotion recognition accuracy or speed. Similarly, the responses to each of the twelve emotions tested showed no evidence of impaired recognition ability, apart from one positive association suggesting that greater self-reported sleep quality could predict more accurate recognition of disgust (study 1).Conclusions: The studies presented here involve considerably larger samples than previous studies and the results support the null hypotheses. Therefore, we suggest that the ability to accurately categorize the emotions of others is not associated with short-term sleep duration or sleep quality and is resilient to acute periods of insufficient sleep.
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| 9. |
- Lundqvist, Daniel, et al.
(author)
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Patients with Parkinson’s disease display a dopamine therapy related negative bias and an enlarged range in emotional responses to facial emotional stimuli
- 2017
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In: Neuropsychology. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0894-4105 .- 1931-1559. ; 31:6, s. 605-612
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Objective: The literature on emotional processing in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients shows mixed results. This may be because of various methodological and/or patient-related differences, such as failing to adjust for cognitive functioning, depression, and/or mood. Method: In the current study, we tested PD patients and healthy controls (HCs) using emotional stimuli across a variety of tasks, including visual search, short-term memory (STM), categorical perception, and emotional stimulus rating. The PD and HC groups were matched on cognitive ability, depression, and mood. We also explored possible relationships between task results and antiparkinsonian treatment effects, as measured by levodopa equivalent dosages (LED), in the PD group. Results: The results show that PD patients use a larger emotional range compared with HCs when reporting their impression of emotional faces on rated emotional valence, arousal, and potency. The results also show that dopaminergic therapy was correlated with stimulus rating results such that PD patients with higher LED scores rated negative faces as less arousing, less negative, and less powerful. Finally, results also show that PD patients display a general slowing effect in the visual search tasks compared with HCs, indicating overall slowed responses. There were no group differences observed in the STM or categorical perception tasks. Conclusions: Our results indicate a relationship between emotional responses, PD, and dopaminergic therapy, in which PD per se is associated with stronger emotional responses, whereas LED levels are negatively correlated with the strength of emotional responses.
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| 10. |
- Nilsonne, Gustav, et al.
(author)
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A multimodal brain imaging dataset on sleep deprivation in young and old humans
- 2017
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The Stockholm Sleepy Brain Study I is a functional brain imaging study of 48 younger (20-30 years) and 36 older (65-75 years) healthy participants, with magnetic resonance imaging after normal sleep and partial sleep deprivation in a crossover design. We performed experiments investigating emotional mimicry, empathy for pain, and cognitive reappraisal, as well as resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We also acquired T1- and T2-weighted structural images and diffusion tensor images (DTI). On the night before imaging, participants were monitored with ambulatory polysomnography and were instructed to sleep either as usual or only three hours. Participants came to the scanner the following evening. Besides MRI scanning, participants underwent behavioral tests and contributed blood samples, which have been stored in a biobank and used for DNA analyses. Participants also completed a variety of self-report measures. The resulting multimodal dataset may be useful for hypothesis generation or independent validation of effects of sleep deprivation and aging, as well as investigation of cross-sectional associations between the different outcomes. V. 2 of this manuscript published 2017-10-12. Changes: new co-author (Claus Lamm), changed affiliations for Kristoffer Månsson, minor changes in the abstract, and revisions of the main text and figures.
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