Investigating the Cognitive Control of Social Media-Anxious Users Using a Psychological Experimental Approach

Social media has become increasingly popular and is now a significant tool for daily communication for many people.The use of social media can cause anxiety and have detrimental impacts on mental health.Cognitive impairment is more likely to affect individuals with anxiety.Investigating the cognitive abilities and mental health of social media users requires the development of new methodologies.This study employed the AX-Continuous Performance Test(AX-CPT)paradigm and the Stroop paradigm to study the cognitive control characteristics of trait anxiety,drawing on psychological experimental methods.Previous studies on whether trait anxiety impairs cognitive control remain controversial,possibly because cognitive control is viewed as a whole.It may also be due to the motivational effect of anxiety,which compensates for the impairment of cognitive control caused by anxiety through the recruitment of cognitive resources.Understanding the mental health and cognitive control traits of anxious social media users can be improved by using the Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control Account,which divides cognitive control into proactive and reactive control.Thefindings demonstrate that trait anxiety has an impact on both proactive and reactive control,while working memory load did not modulate the effect of trait anxiety on cognitive control.These results support the attentional control theory and provide a new approach to studying the mental health of social media users.

Antidepressants combined with psychodrama improve the coping style and cognitive control network in patients with childhood trauma-associated major depressive disorder

BACKGROUND The use of antidepressant therapy alone has a limited efficacy in patients with childhood trauma-associated major depressive disorder(MDD).However,the effectiveness of antidepressant treatment combined with psychodrama in these patients is unclear.AIM To evaluate the effectiveness of antidepressant treatment combined with psychodrama.METHODS Patients with childhood trauma-associated MDD treated with antidepressants were randomly assigned to either the psychodrama intervention(observation group)or the general health education intervention(control group)and received combination treatment for 6 mo.The observation group received general health education given by the investigator together with the“semi-structured group intervention model”of Yi Shu psychodrama.A total of 46 patients were recruited,including 29 cases in the observation group and 17 cases in the control group.Symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as coping style and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging were assessed before and after the intervention.RESULTS Symptoms of depression and anxiety,measured by the Hamilton Depression Scale,Beck Depression Inventory,and Beck Anxiety Inventory,were reduced after the intervention in both groups of patients.The coping style of the observation group improved significantly in contrast to the control group,which did not.In addition,an interaction between treatment and time in the right superior parietal gyrus node was found.Furthermore,functional connectivity between the right superior parietal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus in the observation group increased after the intervention,while in the control group the connectivity decreased.CONCLUSION This study supports the use of combined treatment with antidepressants and psychodrama to improve the coping style of patients with childhood trauma-associated MDD.Functional connectivity between the superior parietal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus was increased after this combined treatment.We speculate that psychodrama enhances the internal connectivity of the cognitive control network and corrects the negative attention bias of patients with childhood trauma-associated MDD.Elucidating the neurobiological features of patients with childhood trauma-associated MDD is important for the development of methods that can assist in early diagnosis and intervention.

AB073.Correlations between control of saccadic eye movements and performance in other cognitive tasks in younger adults,older adults and patients with Parkinson’s disease

Background:Cognitive control is defined as the ability to act flexibly in the environment by either behaving automatically or inhibiting said automatic behaviour and it can be measured using an interleaved pro/anti-saccade task.Decline in cognitive control has been attributed to normal aging and neurological illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease(PD)as well as decline in other cognitive abilities.This parallel might highlight the role played by cognitive control in information processing and working memory.However,little is known about the relationship between cognitive control and other cognitive processes such as visual memory,decision making,and visual search.We thus propose to correlate the incidence of impaired cognitive control with deficits in visual memory,decision making and visual search in three groups:younger adults,older adults and patients with idiopathic PD.Methods:Seventy-one participants,namely 34 adults(M=22.75,SD=3.8),22 older adults(M=67.4,SD=8.3),and 20 PD patients(M=65.59,SD=8.2)performed four tasks:interleaved pro/anti-saccade,visual memory,decision making,and serial and pop-out visual search.Results:Results show that within each group,anti-saccade error rate(ER)were significantly and negatively correlated with visual memory ER(ryounger=−0.378,P=0.036;rolder=−0.440,Polder=0.046;rPD=−0.609,P=0.016).On the other hand,correct decision-making reaction times(RT)were significantly correlated with anti-saccade ER,and RTs only in older adults(rER=0.529,P=0.014;rRT=0.512,P=0.018)and PD patients(rER=0.727,P=0.012;rRT=0.769,P=0.001).For visual search,PD patients showed a significant relationship between RTs for correct pro-saccades and pop-out(r=0.665,P=0.007),and serial(r=0.641,P=0.010)search RTs.Furthermore,there was a significant correlation between MoCA scores and anti-saccade RTs(r=−0.559,P=0.030)and ER(r=−0.562,P=0.029)in PD patients.Taken together,these results support the hypothesis of PD patients’reliance on bottom-up processes as top-down processes decline.For younger adults,there was a significant correlation between serial search performance and both anti-saccade ER(r=0.488,P=0.005),and correct pro-saccade ER(r=0.413,P=0.021).In older adults,this relationship was absent,but anti-saccade ER significantly correlated with pop-out search times(r=0.473,P=0.030).Conclusions:We found significant relationships between cognitive tasks and cognitive control as measured through the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task across and within participant groups,providing evidence of the appropriateness of the use of the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task as a measure of overall cognitive control.

Effect of Level of Processing Prior to Response on Cognitive Control:Evidence from ERP

Based on the idea that intentions have different penetrability to perception and thought, four Stroop-like tasks, AA, AW, WA, and WW are used. Event-related brain potentials are recorded as participants completed these tasks, and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography （sLORETA） is used to localize the sources at specific time points. These results show that there is an interference effect in the AA and WA tasks, but not in the AW or WW tasks. The activated brain areas related to the interference effect in the AA task are the PFC （prefrontal cortex） and ACC （anterior cingulated cortex）, and PFC aetivation takes place prior to ACC activation, but only in WA task. Combined with previous results, a new neural mechanism of cognitive control is proposed.

Neural and Cognitive Markers and Regulation of Emotion in Depression: A Mini-Review and a Short Case Report

In the presented short clinical case of depression, the constructs of Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) of loss (negative valence systems) and cognitive control (cognitive systems) have been operationalized. It has been concluded that a normal cognitive control of emotion, requiring the functional and structural integrity of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), is lacking in depression, but its amelioration can be achieved through the implementation of cognitive remediation/rehabilitation programs. A mini-review on neural and cognitive markers and regulation of emotion in depression is previously presented.

Left- and Right-Handers May Unintentionally Apply Different Cognitive Strategies in Response to Situational Demands: Study Using the Block-Wise Proportion Congruency Effect

We investigated the effects of handedness on developing latent cognitive response strategies according to situation variables. We used the findings of the block-wise Proportion Congruency (PC) effect in which the proportion of congruent trials in a given block modulates the compatibility effect in its block. The block-wise PC effect cannot be intentionally controlled. A Simon task with three different types of Proportion Congruency (PC) in a given block was used to measure the block-wise PC effects. This task was administered to 24 left-handed and 24 right-handed participants. The reaction time and error rates, consistent with previous studies, demonstrated that the block-wise PC effect was observed in left- and right-handers. Crucially, the block-wise PC effect was more pronounced in left- than right-handers, suggesting that left- and right-handers unintentionally apply different cognitive strategies in response to conflict resolution experiences.

Cognition Based Adaptive Control Mechanism

According to the basic functions and objectives of Cognitive Radio (CR) systems, the cognition-based adaptive control mechanism is the generalization of the research contents and approaches of cognitive radio systems. Therefore, the mechanism is described by a cognition loop, which contains the following parts: environment, inner structure of intelligent systems, observation and action.

Altered functional connectivity of prefrontal cortex in chronic heroin abusers

In this study, we investigated alterations in the resting-state functional connectivity of the prefrontal cortex in chronic heroin abusers using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that, compared with normal controls, in heroin abusers the left prefrontal cortex showed decreased functional connectivity with the left hippocampus, right anterior cingulate, left middle frontal gyrus, right middle frontal gyrus and right precuneus. However, the right prefrontal cortex showed decreased functional connectivity with the left orbital frontal cortex and the left middle frontal gyrus in chronic heroin abusers. These alterations of resting-state functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortices of heroin abusers suggest that their frontal executive neural network may be impaired, and that this may contribute to their continued heroin abuse and relapse after withdrawal.

Neural correlations between cognitive deficits and emotion regulation strategies:understanding emotion dysregulation in depression from the perspective of cognitive control and cognitive biases

The link between cognitive function and emotion regulation may be helpful in better understanding the onset,maintenance,and treatment for depression.However,it remains unclear whether there are neural correlates between emotion dysregulation and cognitive deficits in depression.To address this question,we first review the neural representations of emotion dysregulation and cognitive deficits in depression(including deficits in cognitive control and cognitive biases).Based on the comparisons of neural representations of emotion dysregulation versus cognitive deficits,we propose an accessible and reasonable link between emotion dysregulation,cognitive control,and cognitive biases in depression.Specifically,cognitive control serves the whole process of emotion regulation,whereas cognitive biases are engaged in emotion regulation processes at different stages.Moreover,the abnormal implementation of different emotion regulation strategies in depression is consistently affected by cognitive control,which is involved in the dorsolateral,the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex,and the anterior cingulate cortex.Besides,the relationship between different emotion regulation strategies and cognitive biases in depression may be distinct:the orbitofrontal cortex contributes to the association between ineffective reappraisal and negative interpretation bias,while the subgenual prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex underline the tendency of depressed individuals to ruminate and overly engage in self-referential bias.This review sheds light on the relationship between cognitive deficits and emotion dysregulation in depression and identifies directions in need of future attention.

Failure to identify an acute exercise effect on executive function assessed by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

Purpose： Acute exercise has been linked to the facilitation of executive function, but little is known regarding executive function assessed by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test （WCST）. The present research consisted of two experiments aimed to determine whether acute aerobic exercise influences successive WCST performance. Methods： In Study 1, 27 young adults were randomly assigned to the exercise or reading control group and then instiucted to perform the WCST before and after assigned treatment. In exercise group, participants completed a single bout aerobic exercise with moderate intensity for 20 min on a stationary bike. A similar experimental protocol was replicated in Study 2 with 24 late middle-aged adults to look for age differences during adulthood and control for a potential ceiling effect at young adult age. Results： Although a significant time effect was observed in young adults, both studies revealed that there was no main effect for treatment or an interaction between treatment and time on any of the WCST indices. Conclusion： Acute aerobic exercise failed to influence executive function as assessed by the WCST, revealing that this classical neuropsy- chological test tapping executive function may not be sensitive to acute exercise. Our findings suggest that acute exercise does not broadly affect the entire family of executive functions, or its effect on a specific aspect of executive function may be task-dependent, as proposed by Etnier and Chanj~ （2009）.

Robotic Smart Prosthesis Arm with BCI and Kansei/Kawaii/Affective Engineering Approach.Pt I: Quantum Soft Computing Supremacy

A description of the design stage and results of the development of the conceptual structure of a robotic prosthesis arm is given.As a result,a prototype of man-made smart prosthesis on a 3D printer as well as a foundation for computational intelligence presented.The application of soft computing technology(the first step of IT)allows to extract knowledge directly from the physical signal of the electroencephalogram,as well as to form knowledge-based intelligent robust control of the lower performing level taking into account the assessment of the patient’s emotional state.The possibilities of applying quantum soft computing technologies(the second step of IT)in the processes of robust filtering of electroencephalogram signals for the formation of mental commands of robotic prosthetic arm discussed.Quantum supremacy benchmark of intelligent control simulation demonstrated.