Yuri I. Alexandrov

Nonlinear Relationship Between Emotional Valence and Brain Activity: Evidence of Separate Negative and Positive Valence Dimensions

Emotion plays a significant role in goal‐directed behavior, yet its neural basis is yet poorly understood. In several psychological models the cardinal dimensions that characterize the emotion space are considered to be valence and arousal. Here 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to reveal brain areas that show valence‐ and arousal‐dependent blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal responses. Seventeen healthy adults viewed pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) for brief 100 ms periods in a block design paradigm. In many brain regions BOLD signals correlated significantly positively with valence ratings of unpleasant pictures. Interestingly, partly in the same regions but also in several other regions BOLD signals correlated negatively with valence ratings of pleasant pictures. Therefore, there were several areas where the correlation across all pictures was of inverted U‐shape. Such correlations were found bilaterally in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) extending to anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and insula. Self‐rated arousal of those pictures which were evaluated to be unpleasant correlated with BOLD signal in the ACC, whereas for pleasant pictures arousal correlated positively with the BOLD signal strength in the right substantia innominata. We interpret our results to suggest a major division of brain mechanisms underlying affective behavior to those evaluating stimuli to be pleasant or unpleasant. This is consistent with the basic division of behavior to approach and withdrawal, where differentiation of hostile and hospitable stimuli is crucial. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010.

Frontal midline theta related to learning in a simulated driving task.

The occurrence of frontal midline theta activity (4-7 Hz) was studied in a simulated driving task during consecutive phases of goal-directed behaviour. Electrical activity of the forebrain (Fz) was analysed in a simulated traffic situation in which the subject had to find the correct way to drive a car through a set of roads in a computer game. The occurrence of theta activity was analysed during seven consecutive sections of the game. The results showed that the occurrence of theta activity increased during learning--successful behaviour produced more theta than unsuccessful behaviour. In some sections of the game the percentage of theta was larger than in others. It is suggested that the theta activity reflects relaxed concentration after mastering the game.

Differential effects of alcohol on the cortical processing of foreign and native language

The effect of alcohol (ethanol) on cortical processing of Finnish vs. English words in Finnish-speaking subjects was studied by recording auditory event-related potentials in 10 subjects who had started studying English at the age of 9-10 years. At the beginning of the block of 100 words, the subject heard an introductory sentence. Half of the words completed the sentence well and the other half did not. The subject pressed a reaction key immediately after hearing a proper word. After the control condition, the subject ingested alcohol (1 ml/kg). Alcohol attenuated the amplitude of N100 to both Finnish and English words, this attenuation being significantly stronger for English than for Finnish words. The early differential effect of alcohol suggests that language-specific information is extracted in the cortex already approximately 100 ms from the word onset. The results are in line with animal experiments demonstrating that alcohol selectively affects the activity of single units involved in newer forms of behavior.

Sociocultural Influences on Moral Judgments: East–West, Male–Female, and Young–Old

Gender, age, and culturally specific beliefs are often considered relevant to observed variation in social interactions. At present, however, the scientific literature is mixed with respect to the significance of these factors in guiding moral judgments. In this study, we explore the role of each of these factors in moral judgment by presenting the results of a web-based study of Eastern (i.e., Russia) and Western (i.e., USA, UK, Canada) subjects, male and female, and young and old. Participants (n = 659) responded to hypothetical moral scenarios describing situations where sacrificing one life resulted in saving five others. Though men and women from both types of cultures judged (1) harms caused by action as less permissible than harms caused by omission, (2) means-based harms as less permissible than side-effects, and (3) harms caused by contact as less permissible than by non-contact, men in both cultures delivered more utilitarian judgments (save the five, sacrifice one) than women. Moreover, men from Western cultures were more utilitarian than Russian men, with no differences observed for women. In both cultures, older participants delivered less utilitarian judgments than younger participants. These results suggest that certain core principles may mediate moral judgments across different societies, implying some degree of universality, while also allowing a limited range of variation due to sociocultural factors.

Mental Reactivation and Pleasantness Judgment of Experience Related to Vision, Hearing, Skin Sensations, Taste and Olfaction

Language acquisition is based on our knowledge about the world and forms through multiple sensory-motor interactions with the environment. We link the properties of individual experience formed at different stages of ontogeny with the phased development of sensory modalities and with the acquisition of words describing the appropriate forms of sensitivity. To test whether early-formed experience related to skin sensations, olfaction and taste differs from later-formed experience related to vision and hearing, we asked Russian-speaking participants to categorize or to assess the pleasantness of experience mentally reactivated by sense-related adjectives found in common dictionaries. It was found that categorizing adjectives in relation to vision, hearing and skin sensations took longer than categorizing adjectives in relation to olfaction and taste. In addition, experience described by adjectives predominantly related to vision, hearing and skin sensations took more time for the pleasantness judgment and generated less intense emotions than that described by adjectives predominantly related to olfaction and taste. Interestingly the dynamics of skin resistance corresponded to the intensity and pleasantness of reported emotions. We also found that sense-related experience described by early-acquired adjectives took less time for the pleasantness judgment and generated more intense and more positive emotions than that described by later-acquired adjectives. Correlations were found between the time of the pleasantness judgment of experience, intensity and pleasantness of reported emotions, age of acquisition, frequency, imageability and length of sense-related adjectives. All in all these findings support the hypothesis that early-formed experience is less differentiated than later-formed experience.

Cognition as Systemogenesis

The present report has the following two objectives: to provide a survey of systemic conceptions in psychophysiology that are rooted in the theory of functional systems, and to compare the development of these conceptions with tendencies characterizing progress in world science. On the basis of ample experimental material in the framework of systems psychophysiology, views are formulated on the formative and dynamic regularities of individual experience. Within this framework, applying a systemic approach to the study of cognition entails multidisciplinary investigation of the systemogenesis and actualization of neurocognitive systems. Science, being a part of culture, along with invariant characteristics reflecting its global character, possesses also certain local, national features. Peculiarities of Russian science are discussed, as well as the complementarity of local culture-specific components of world science.

LTP in cingulate cortex of freely moving rats: duration and mGluR independence

The role of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR) in synaptic transmission and plasticity of field potentials (fEPs) evoked by subicular stimulation of the cingulate cortex was investigated in freely moving adult rats. Tetanic stimulation with 100 Hz trains caused an enhancement of synaptic transmission in the cingulate cortex which lasted at least 24 hours, and can thus, be regarded as long-term potentiation (LTP). I.c.v. injection of the metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) antagonist (R,S)-α-methyl-4-carboxyphenylglycine (MCPG) did not influence either baseline synaptic transmission or LTP of the fEPs. In contrast to the hippocampus mGluRs of the cingulate cortex seem not to be critically involved in the development of late LTP stages.

Neuronal Bases of Systemic Organization of Behavior

Despite the years of studies in the field of systems neuroscience, functions of neural circuits and behavior-related systems are still not entirely clear. The systems description of brain activity has recently been associated with cognitive concepts, e.g. a cognitive map, reconstructed via place-cell activity analysis and the like, and a cognitive schema, modeled in consolidation research. The issue we find of importance is that a cognitive unit reconstructed in neuroscience research is mainly formulated in terms of environment. In other words, the individual experience is considered as a model or reflection of the outside world and usually lacks a biological meaning, such as describing a given part of the world for the individual. In this chapter, we present the idea of a cognitive component that serves as a model of behavioral interaction with environment, rather than a model of the environment itself. This intangible difference entails the need in substantial revision of several well-known phenomena, including the long-term potentiation.The principal questions developed here are how the cognitive units appear and change upon learning and performance, and how the links between them create the whole structure of individual experience. We argue that a clear distinction between processes that provide the emergence of new components and those underlying the retrieval and/or changes in the existing ones is necessary in learning and memory research. We then describe a view on learning and corresponding neuronal activity analysis that may help set this distinction.

A Russian Adaptation of the Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being

It is intended in this study to present initial reliability and validity data for the Russian adaptation of the Multidimensional Inventory of Religious/Spiritual Well-being (MI-RSWB-R), as being related to personality factors and psychopathology. Therefore, the first version of the MI-RSWB-R was applied to a sample of 192 (147 females) non-clinical subjects, together with the NEO Five Factor Inventory and the Symptom-Check-List (SCL-90-R). The original six-factor structure of the scale could be replicated for the MI-RSWB-R, which also provides satisfying psychometric properties. In accordance with previous research the RSWB total score was linked to more favorable personality traits such as Extraversion (r = .45), Openness to Experience (r = .39), and Agreeableness (r = .38), which was paralleled by substantial negative correlations with increased psychopathology. Our findings support the reliability and structural validity of the MI-RSWB-R as a standardized instrument for addressing the spiritual dimension in Russian populations. Further research in clinical surroundings is now recommended.

The prerequisites of prosocial behavior in human ontogeny

Understanding the development of moral attitudes toward unrelated individuals from different social groups may provide insights into the role of biological and cultural factors in prosocial behavior. Children (3–11 years old, N=80) were presented with moral dilemmas describing a conflict of interests between a con-specific (human) and another species (animals or aliens). Participants were asked to evaluate the behavior of a human in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and to choose whom they would help: a human aggressor who benefits at the expense of a victim in vital need, or the victim. Results showed that the older children preferred to help non-human victims significantly more often than the younger children. The evaluation of human actions was related to the proportion of such preferences. These findings are discussed from the perspectives of kin selection theory, group selection theory and the system-evolutionary approach. The implications of the study for moral education are suggested.