In the study of covert visual attention, two event-related potential (ERP) components have been identified by earlier research. The N2 posterior contralateral (N2pc) component has been suggested to index the enhancement of attention to a specific lateralized target item. The distractor positivity (PD) component has been suggested to index the suppression of distractors appearing in the same search array. Earlier studies have reported different latencies for the PD component depending on the task and experiment. Furthermore, the N2pc and the PD component are not always elicited in the same experiment. Relative target-to-difficult-distractor placement have been shown to affect the mean amplitude of the N2pc. Less is known about how different relative placements affect the PD component. The aim of the present study was to try and elicit both an N2pc and a PD component in the same visual search paradigm. The PD was recorded later time-window which previous studies have suggested to indicate the ending of attention to a previously attended target. Three relative placements were analysed, horizontally opposite, vertically opposite and diagonally opposite. When combining all three relative placements an N2pc component was elicited contralateral to the target. No PD component was found when combining all relative placements. A larger mean amplitude N2pc was measured for the vertically opposite condition. The results are not in line with previous research, that have found the N2pc to be smaller in conditions where both target and distractor are on the same side of the visual field. However, when comparing upper and lower visual field targets the N2pc was found to be larger for lower visual field stimuli, which is in line with previous research. A larger mean amplitude for the PD was found in the diagonally opposite condition. Earlier research has suggested that when difficult distractor and target are located on separate sides of the visual field, this leads to successful inhibition, indexed by the PD component. In contrast to earlier research a larger PD component was not found for upper visual field stimuli. The present study differs from previous studies in the way the target and difficult distractor were placed and analysed. By separating what has previously been called “opposite side” condition into two separate conditions diagonally opposite and horizontally opposite the results from the present study seem to suggest that these two conditions are not synonymous. However, the results should be regarded with caution due to the small sample size. Furthermore, the horizontally opposite side condition also differs from previous studies with regards to relative target and distractor distances, which could have had an effect on the results.

This thesis reviews the literature on theoretical cognitive neuroscientific findings linked to self-compassion, emotion regulation and compassion. Further, an empirical study was conducted with the aim to investigate correlational findings of self-compassion in relation to mental health in India. Mental health was measured through positive and negative affect, symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder and depression. The background of the thesis is mainly centred on the emotion regulation strategy cognitive reappraisal and compassion to provide more understanding of the links regarding self-compassion and mental health. The neural underpinnings regarding reappraisal and self-compassion are mostly related to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, anterior cingulate cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, insula and amygdala. These regions are involved in functions such as attention, memory, reward, emotion processes and responses. The correlational study involved 91 south Indian university students between the age of 19-24 years. The most significant results indicate a strong negative relationship between self-compassion and negative affect. Self-compassion was moderately positively correlated with positive affect. Furthermore, self-compassion was moderately negatively correlated with symptoms of depression. In addition, a strong positive correlation between negative affect and symptoms of depression was found. A discussion regarding current findings in relation to the neural underpinnings of emotion regulation and self-compassion, limitations of the study as well as directions for future research is provided.

This thesis aims to investigate and present what the most recent research can disclose about moral emotions and their neural correlates. This literature review provides an overview of some frameworks and theories regarding moral emotions and their neural correlates, with a specific focus on positive and negative moral emotions such as compassion, pride, gratitude, guilt, shame, and embarrassment. The theoretical background of moral emotions within cognitive neuroscience has been introduced together with research of the emotional brain and morality to further clarify the main topic of this thesis, moral emotions and their neural correlates. Moral emotions are very crucial in understanding humans’ behavioural adherence to their moral standards. For example, shame is described as the way we relate and perceive ourselves. It is related to how we believe and think other people see us and our incompetence or failure to fulfil the desire to be a good person, e.g. “I think, feel and believe that I am a bad person for lying to someone”. These topics have been discoursed through this thesis showing significant results. There are many neural regions, e.g. medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) which get activated whilst experiencing distinct moral emotions. However, studies have shown that there is no one-to-one correspondence between a specific brain area and a specific emotion, instead, research has suggested there are particular topographical anatomical networks in the brain which get activated when experiencing different emotions. There are few studies in this field; their results should be taken with caution. The field continues to grow, and we can learn more about moral emotions and their neural correlates today and in the future.

Autismspektrumtillstånd (AST), är ett spektrum av funktionsvariationer som visar sig i sociala-, emotionella- samt empatiska interaktioner. AST-personers tolkning samt brist i inkännandet av andra personer bidrar till sociala-, empatiska-, samt emotionella problem. Resultat presenterade från kognitiv neurovetenskap studier visar positiv korrelation för förmågan att mentalisera, även känt som Theory of Mind (ToM), och hjärnregionen mediala prefrontala hjärnbarken (mPFC) som modererar, det vill säga styr sociala beteenden, exekutiva funktioner (handlingsförmågan) samt tolkningen av andra människors mentala tillstånd. Prefrontala hjärnregioner samt limbiska systemet visar på positiv korrelation till empatiska-, emotionella- samt sociala förmågor. Huvudfråga för denna systematiska översikt var hur personer med AST påverkas socialt, empatiskt samt emotionellt i interventionsutövandet av ToM och sociala förmågor. Fem studier fokuserade på AST-personer (vuxna, unga vuxna eller barn) och deras förmågor inom sociala-, empatiska- samt emotionella områden. Olika interventionsprogram (ToM och sociala förmågor) och mätningsinstrument bidrog till resultat gällande AST-deltagares potentiella utveckling. Slutresultaten visade på varierat utfall gällande vilka interventionsprogram som bidrog till ökad social-, empatisk- eller emotionell förståelse, vilket slutligen demonstrerade att mer empirisk data anses nödvändig inom AST-forskningen.

No description available.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a mental disorder where the patient is preoccupied with a misperceived deficit in their appearance. It is a common disorder (~2% prevalence worldwide), leaving the patients significantly disabled and distressed. Comorbid disorders such as social phobia, depression, and anxiety disorders appear frequently. Previous neuroimaging studies have found heterogeneous abnormalities in brain regions involved in visual and emotional processing when comparing BDD patients to healthy controls. Some of these areas are involved in limbic structures. The emotional limbic system (involved in emotion recognition, reward, social behaviour, and decision-making) and the memory hippocampal limbic system (involved in episodic memory, information about objects, faces, and spatial locations) have been stated as two separate neural systems. The aim of this systematic review was to analyse the neural correlates of BDD focusing on structural changes in limbic structures, and further investigate whether the emotional limbic circuit exclusively is affected or solely higher influenced than the rest of the limbic structures. Abnormalities in information processing due to aberrant WM connectivity was found, as well as that volumetric alterations in GM and WM tracts correlate with clinical symptomatology. The relationship between visual and emotional processing system abnormalities and BDD severity suggests an involvement of the emotional limbic system in BDD.

The phenomenal experience of our visual perception, what it is like to be in that state, is something that we might take for granted. However, looking closer at the neural correlates of visual processing in relation to phenomenal experience we recognize that it is a complex issue. Whether our subjective experience of our visual representation of the world is attached to cognitive functions, like working memory and attention, or whether some sort of richness overflows such functions, is an ongoing debate within cognitive neuroscience. Advocates for overflow argue that phenomenal experience is the result of activity in posterior occipito-temporo-parietal areas and is independent of attention, while those within the non-overflow position mean that for phenomenal awareness to arise activity in higher-level areas like the prefrontal lobe is needed. Finding evidence for unattended visual phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness would support the overflow position since it could indicate phenomenal experience as independent of attention. In addition to this debate, researchers need to keep in mind what methods are being used to measure phenomenal experience, since several biases potentially follow studies using introspective measures. Through this systematic review, a search string provided empirical studies based on fMRI that investigated unconscious and conscious visual processing. The results of this review show little or weak evidence for unattended visual phenomenal consciousness and do not seem to overflow cognitive functions.

Our experience of the world is subjective–we are constantly interpreting the world around us according to what we have already perceived, experienced, and learned. How we interpret the world–and how we draw on prior experience to do so–is studied in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, theorized about in philosophy, and explored in the arts. To study subjective interpretation, we combine multiple disciplines – using behavioral paradigms from cognitive neuroscience and psychology in order to test an overarching framework of subjective interpretation that arose in art history–the Beholder’s Share. In this dissertation, I present three studies that investigate the behavioral and neural phenomena of the Beholder’s Share. I begin, in Chapter 1, by giving an overview of the Beholder’s Share and its intersections with theories of the mind and brain. I then discuss our approach to studying the Beholder's Share; namely, by measuring cognitive and neural responses to abstract and representational art by the same artist, as a key prediction following from the Beholder’s Share is that it will be different for abstract and representational art. Following this, I then present a review of the literature that has begun to characterize the cognitive and neural responses to abstract and representational art, and the open questions we address in our studies. Chapter 2 presents a behavioral study that leverages the well-established theory of mental representations–Construal Level Theory (CLT). Drawing from CLT, we develop a behavioral paradigm that reliably characterizes differences in mental representations between abstract art and representational art, showing that abstract art evokes more abstract, context-independent representations than representational art. This study serves to establish reliable and measurable differences in the subjective experience of abstract and representational art, and yields a task that can be used to elicit these differences. Chapter 3 describes a study that combines behavior and fMRI, and takes advantage of advancements in multivariate analysis methods of brain activity and models of natural language processing to capture the Beholder’s Share in neural activity and written descriptions. This study demonstrates that both neural and semantic representations evoked by abstract paintings are more subject-unique than those evoked by representational paintings. Moreover, subject-unique patterns of brain activity are present in the Default Mode Network, a set of brain regions thought to be involved in internally oriented cognition. This study demonstrates that participants contribute personal associations to abstract paintings more than to representational paintings, and links this process to brain regions involved in higher-level cognitive processes. Chapter 4 examines the role of prior experience in subjective interpretation. I present a study in which we induced different prior experiences with an emotional autobiographical memory induction and measured the effects of that manipulation in written descriptions of abstract paintings. This study shows that abstract paintings are more vulnerable to manipulations in prior experiences, as well as individual differences in naturally occurring experiences, measured by self-report. Together, these results suggest that abstract paintings are interpreted more subjectively than representational paintings. This process of subjective interpretation recruits regions of the brain involved in internally oriented cognition (the DMN) and involves drawing on prior experiences. These results, and the methods we used to obtain them, have implications for understanding subjective experience and cognition more fully. Chapter 5 situates these results in the broader discussion of how we study subjectivity, and carves out a role for the Beholder’s Share in future research characterizing individual differences.

No description available.

Flashbulb memories are formed through widely shared events that have affected the culture and community. The “flash” in flashbulb memories refers to the specific details that individuals have developed in their memories. The presented research focuses on the specific event of college students at the University of Central Florida (UCF) hearing about university closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This research study sought to identify the variables that have affected the accuracy of flashbulb memories formation regarding the event of college students hearing about university closure because of the pandemic. The variables of the students’ relevance to the university, location, source of hearing about the university’s closure, and political group they belong to were investigated to determine if they affected the accuracy of the memories that were developed. An online survey was sent to students inquiring about the specifics and details that they remembered when finding out that the university was closed and was going to move to remote instruction. Participants included 226 college students who filled out the survey between February 3, 2021, and July 21, 2021. The survey included questions regarding the experiences of students when they learned about COVID-19 and university closure. Data revealed that a greater relevance to the event can cause a greater amount of rehearsal and recall of memories. The rehearsal and recall of memories are crucial variables to developing accurate flashbulb memories. This study contributes to the lack of research in flashbulb memories associated with pandemics. The study will be an addition to determining variables that have affected the accuracy of flashbulb memories.