Jaime Vila

The rhythm of the heart in the blink of an eye: Emotion-modulated startle magnitude covaries with heart rate variability

Emotion-modulated startle is a robust phenomenon that has been demonstrated in a wide range of experimental situations. Similarly, heart rate variability (HRV) has been associated with a diverse range of processes including affective and attentional regulation. The present study sought to examine the relationship between these two important measures of affective behavior. Ninety female participants viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures while exposed to acoustic startle stimuli. The eyeblink startle was recorded both during the affective foregrounds and during intertrial intervals. HRV was assessed during a resting baseline and relationships between HRV and startle magnitudes examined. Results indicated that resting HRV was inversely related to startle magnitude during both intertrial intervals and affective foregrounds. In addition, the participants with the highest HRV showed the most differentiated emotion-modulated startle effects, whereas those with the lowest HRV, compared to those with the highest HRV, showed significantly potentiated startle to neutral foregrounds and marginally potentiated startle to pleasant foregrounds. The findings are consistent with models that posit that prefrontal cortical activity modulates subcortical motivation circuits. These results have important implications for the use of startle probe methodology and for HRV in the study of emotional regulation and dysregulation.

The development and validation of Spanish versions of the State and Trait Food Cravings Questionnaires

OBJECTIVE We developed and tested the psychometric properties of Spanish versions of the Trait and State Food Cravings Questionnaires (FCQ-T and FCQ-S respectively). METHOD The instruments were translated and adapted to Spanish and administered to undergraduate students from a Southern university in Spain (N = 271). The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis to compare the factor structure of the English and Spanish versions of both questionnaires. RESULTS The factors structure of both questionnaires obtained excellent fit indices across their Spanish versions with the one exception that some factors of the FCQ-S were more highly intercorrelated among the Spanish sample than the American. DISCUSSION This study supports the conceptualization of food cravings as universal multidimensional motivational states that can be reliably measured and supports the use of the Spanish versions of the FCQ.

Treating chronic worry: Psychological and physiological effects of a training programme based on mindfulness.

The present study examines psychological and physiological indices of emotional regulation in non-clinical high worriers after a mindfulness-based training programme aimed at reducing worry. Thirty-six female university students with high Penn State Worry Questionnaire scores were split into two equal intervention groups: (a) mindfulness, and (b) progressive muscle relaxation plus self-instruction to postpone worrying to a specific time of the day. Assessment included clinical questionnaires, daily self-report of number/duration of worry episodes and indices of emotional meta-cognition. A set of somatic and autonomic measures was recorded (a) during resting, mindfulness/relaxation and worrying periods, and (b) during cued and non-cued affective modulation of defence reactions (cardiac defence and eye-blink startle). Both groups showed equal post-treatment improvement in the clinical and daily self-report measures. However, mindfulness participants reported better emotional meta-cognition (emotional comprehension) and showed improved indices of somatic and autonomic regulation (reduced breathing pattern and increased vagal reactivity during evocation of cardiac defense). These findings suggest that mindfulness reduces chronic worry by promoting emotional and physiological regulatory mechanisms contrary to those maintaining chronic worry.

The Aggression Questionnaire: A validation study in student samples.

The goal of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) in Spain. The AQ is a 29-item instrument designed to measure the different dimensions of the hostility/anger/aggression construct. It consists of 4 subscales that assess: (a) anger, (b) hostility, (c) verbal aggression, and (d) physical aggression. In Study 1, reliability, construct validity, and convergent validity were evaluated in a group of 384 male and female university students. Test-retest reliability was evaluated using a group of 154 male and female university students. The results of the factor analysis were similar to the scale structure claimed for this instrument. The subscales also showed internal consistency and stability over time. The AQ and its subscales were also compared with the scales and subscales of the Spielberger State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI), the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (Ho), the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI), and the Jenkins Activity Survey-Form H (JASE-H). The results show that the AQ evaluates some aspects of anger, such as Anger-Trait and Anger-Out, rather than other elements, such as Anger-In or Anger-State. In Study 2, two new male groups were used to evaluate the criterion validity of the AQ: 57 prison inmates and 93 university students, finding that this instrument discriminated between the scores obtained by common offenders and university students.

Estimating respiratory frequency from autoregressive spectral analysis of heart period

In this article we report the results of a pilot study and a larger investigation that examined the relationship between respiration frequency assessed using the traditional mercury strain gauge and using the central frequency of the HF component derived from autoregressive spectral analysis.

Subjective and physiological reactivity to chocolate images in high and low chocolate cravers.

Cue-reactivity to chocolate images was assessed using self-report and physiological measures. From a pre-screening sample of 454, young women were selected and assigned to high and low chocolate craving groups (N = 36/group). The experimental procedure consisted in the elicitation and measurement of the cardiac defense and startle reflexes while viewing chocolate and standard affective images selected from the International Affective Picture System. In response to chocolate images, high cravers reported more pleasure and arousal but less control than low cravers. In high cravers, viewing chocolate images inhibited the cardiac defense but potentiated the startle reflex, as compared to low cravers. The results confirmed at the physiological level that the motivational state that underlies the experience of chocolate craving include both appetitive (inhibition of the defense reflex) and aversive (potentiation of the startle response) components. The findings supported a motivational conflict theory of chocolate craving.

KARDIA: A Matlab software for the analysis of cardiac interbeat intervals

This article presents KARDIA, a Matlab (MathWorks Inc., MA) software developed for the analysis of cardiac interbeat interval (IBI) data. Available functions are called through a graphical user interface and permit the study of phasic cardiac responses (PCRs) and the estimation of time and frequency domain heart rate variability (HRV) parameters. Scaling exponents of heartbeat fluctuations are calculated with the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) algorithm. Grand average and individual subject results can be exported to spreadsheets for further statistical analysis. KARDIA is distributed free of charge under the terms of GNU public license so that other users can modify the code and adjust the programs performance according to their own scientific requirements.

Startle reflex modulation, affective ratings and autonomic reactivity in incarcerated Spanish psychopaths

Startle probe modulation during affective picture viewing was assessed in a Spanish prison population. As for North American inmates, psychopaths failed to display normal blink potentiation during unpleasant slides even though their evaluative judgments and autonomic reaction to affective stimuli paralleled those of other inmate and noninmate participants. The results suggest that diminished defense activation characterizes psychopaths despite cultural differences.

Affective processing of loved faces: Contributions from peripheral and central electrophysiology

Research on the neural mechanisms of face identity constitutes a fruitful method to explore the affective contributions to face processing. Here, we investigated central and peripheral electrophysiological indices associated with the perception of loved faces. Subjects viewed black-and-white photographs of faces that belonged to one of five categories: loved ones, famous people, unknown people, babies, and neutral faces from the Eckman and Friesen system. Subcategories of loved faces included romantic partner, parents, siblings, second-degree relatives, and friends. Pictures were presented in two separate blocks, differing in viewing time (0.5s vs. 4s), inter-stimulus interval (1.2s vs. 18s), and number of face presentations (200 vs. 50). Heart rate, skin conductance, electromyography of the zygomatic muscle, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained while participants passively viewed the pictures. Subjective picture ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance were obtained at the end of the experiment. Both central and peripheral electrophysiological measures differentiated faces of loved ones from all other categories by eliciting higher heart rate, skin conductance, and zygomatic activity, as well as larger amplitudes of the late ERP components P3 and LPP. Loved faces also resulted in higher valence and arousal, but lower dominance ratings. Additional differences were found among subcategories of loved faces. Faces of romantic partners elicited higher physiological (skin conductance and zygomatic activity) and subjective (emotional arousal) responses than parents, siblings, or friends, suggesting that looking at the image of someone we love evokes strong positive affect and emotional/cognitive arousal that go beyond a feeling of familiarity or simple recognition.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia as an index of parasympathetic cardiac control during the cardiac defense response

The respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is being used by psychophysiologists as an index of parasympathetic cardiac control mainly in tasks within a tonic response paradigm. In procedures which engender phasic responses the belief exists that the RSA could be contaminated by slower nonrhythmic trends in the data. In the present paper two experiments are reported. The first experiment valuates, through beta-adrenergic blocking, the validity of the RSA as an index of phasic changes in parasympathetic cardiac control during phasic changes in sympathetic activation: the cardiac defense response (CDR) to intense auditory stimulation. The second experiment examines the RSA response pattern associated with the CDR. The results of the first experiment, that the RSA response pattern is not significantly influenced by the beta-adrenergic block, suggest that RSA may index phasic changes in parasympathetic cardiac control during phasic response procedures such as those which elicit the CDR. The results of the second study indicate that the CDR is associated with a pattern of changes in RSA made up of four components--reduction, increase, reduction and increase--which run parallel, but in opposite direction, to the heart rate changes. The results of both studies are consistent with a parasympathetic mediation of the first two components of the CDR and a sympathetic-parasympathetic interactive mediation of the last two components.