Eva-maria Seidel - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Eva-maria Seidel

Scientific reports, 2015

Imaging the amygdala with functional MRI is confounded by multiple averse factors, notably signal... more Imaging the amygdala with functional MRI is confounded by multiple averse factors, notably signal dropouts due to magnetic inhomogeneity and low signal-to-noise ratio, making it difficult to obtain consistent activation patterns in this region. However, even when consistent signal changes are identified, they are likely to be due to nearby vessels, most notably the basal vein of rosenthal (BVR). Using an accelerated fMRI sequence with a high temporal resolution (TR = 333 ms) combined with susceptibility-weighted imaging, we show how signal changes in the amygdala region can be related to a venous origin. This finding is confirmed here in both a conventional fMRI dataset (TR = 2000 ms) as well as in information of meta-analyses, implying that "amygdala activations" reported in typical fMRI studies are likely confounded by signals originating in the BVR rather than in the amygdala itself, thus raising concerns about many conclusions on the functioning of the amygdala that re...

Human Brain Mapping, 2014

Objectives: Anticipatory processes prepare the organism for upcoming experiences. The aim of this... more Objectives: Anticipatory processes prepare the organism for upcoming experiences. The aim of this study was to investigate neural responses related to anticipation and processing of painful stimuli occurring with different levels of uncertainty. Experimental design: Twenty-five participants (13 females) took part in an electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment at separate times. A visual cue announced the occurrence of an electrical painful or nonpainful stimulus, delivered with certainty or uncertainty (50% chance), at some point during the following 15 s. Principal observations: During the first 2 s of the anticipation phase, a strong effect of uncertainty was reflected in a pronounced frontal stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) and increased fMRI activation in higher visual processing areas. In the last 2 s before stimulus delivery, we observed stimulus-specific preparatory processes indicated by a centroparietal SPN and posterior insula activation that was most pronounced for the certain pain condition. Uncertain anticipation was associated with attentional control processes. During stimulation, the results revealed that unexpected painful stimuli produced the strongest activation in the affective pain processing network and a more pronounced offset-P2. Conclusions: Our results reflect that during early anticipation uncertainty is strongly associated with affective mechanisms and seems to be a more salient event compared to certain anticipation. During the last 2 s before stimulation, attentional control mechanisms are initiated related to the increased salience of uncertainty. Furthermore, stimulus-specific preparatory mechanisms during certain anticipation also shaped the response to stimulation, underlining the adaptive value of Eva-Maria Seidel and Daniela M. Pfabigan contributed equally to this study.

Biological Psychology, 2015

The present study investigated whether the same visual stimulus indicating zero-value feedback (D... more The present study investigated whether the same visual stimulus indicating zero-value feedback (D 0) elicits feedback-related negativity (FRN) variation, depending on whether the outcomes correspond with expectations or not.

Journal of Personality Disorders, 2014

This study investigated affective and cognitive empathic processes in incarcerated violent offend... more This study investigated affective and cognitive empathic processes in incarcerated violent offenders with lower and higher psychopathic traits and healthy controls. Participants witnessed painful expressions of others displayed on video clips. Skin conductance responses (SCR) were recorded to assess autonomic emotional arousal, and various empathy ratings were used as measures of self-reported vicarious responses. Reduced SCRs occurred during the observation of pain in others in lower and higher psychopathictrait participants alike, compared to controls. Despite these diminished autonomic responses indicating reduced vicarious responses, only inmates with higher psychopathic traits provided empathy ratings comparable to those of the controls. These findings indicate that violent offenders display reduced autonomic arousal in response to distress cues of others, irrespective of psychopathy. However, only higher psychopathic-trait offenders were able to provide self-report in a way that let them appear to be as empathic as controls-enabling them to know, yet not to feel, what others feel.

Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, Psychologie und Psychotherapie, 2013

Social Neuroscience, 2011

Successful human interaction is based on correct recognition, interpretation, and appropriate rea... more Successful human interaction is based on correct recognition, interpretation, and appropriate reaction to facial affect. In depression, social skill deficits are among the most restraining symptoms leading to social withdrawal, thereby aggravating social isolation and depressive affect. Dysfunctional approach and withdrawal tendencies to emotional stimuli have been documented, but the investigation of their neural underpinnings has received limited attention. We performed an fMRI study including 15 depressive patients and 15 matched, healthy controls. All subjects performed two tasks, an implicit joystick task as well as an explicit rating task, both using happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions. Behavioral data analysis indicated a significant group effect, with depressed patients showing more withdrawal than controls. Analysis of the functional data revealed significant group effects for both tasks. Among other regions, we observed significant group differences in amygdala activation, with patients showing less response particularly during approach to happy faces. Additionally, significant correlations of amygdala activation with psychopathology emerged, suggesting that more pronounced symptoms are accompanied by stronger decreases of amygdala activation. Hence, our results demonstrate that depressed patients show dysfunctional social approach and withdrawal behavior, which in turn may aggravate the disorder by negative social interactions contributing to isolation and reinforcing cognitive biases.

Social Neuroscience, 2010

Schizophrenia Research, 2012

Empathy is a rather elaborated human ability and several recent studies highlight significant imp... more Empathy is a rather elaborated human ability and several recent studies highlight significant impairments in patients suffering from psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression. Therefore, the present study aimed at comparing behavioral empathy performance in schizophrenia, bipolar and depressed patients with healthy controls. All subjects performed three tasks tapping the core components of empathy: emotion recognition, emotional perspective taking and affective responsiveness. Groups were matched for age, gender, and verbal intelligence. Data analysis revealed three main findings: First, schizophrenia patients showed the strongest impairment in empathic performance followed by bipolar patients while depressed patients performed similar to controls in most tasks, except for affective responsiveness. Second, a significant association between clinical characteristics and empathy performance was only apparent in depression, indicating worse affective responsiveness with stronger symptom severity and longer duration of illness. Third, self-report data indicate that particularly bipolar patients describe themselves as less empathic, reporting less empathic concern and less perspective taking. Taken together, this study constitutes the first approach to directly compare specificity of empathic deficits in severe psychiatric disorders. Our results suggest disorder-specific impairments in emotional competencies that enable better characterization of the patient groups investigated and indicate different psychotherapeutic interventions.

Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2013

Please cite this article in press as: Seidel, E.M., et al., The impact of social exclusion vs. in... more Please cite this article in press as: Seidel, E.M., et al., The impact of social exclusion vs. inclusion on subjective and hormonal reactions in females and males. Psychoneuroendocrinology (2013), http://dx.

Psychiatry Research, 2010

Emotional facial expressions are the most salient cues in social life. Successful social interact... more Emotional facial expressions are the most salient cues in social life. Successful social interaction is based on correct recognition, interpretation and appropriate reaction to these cues. However, social skill deficits are among the most debilitating symptoms of depression, leading to social withdrawal and aggravating the disorder in various domains. We used an implicit joystick task to measure automatic behavioral tendencies in response to evoked facial expressions (anger, fear, sadness, happiness and neutral). Additionally, we implemented a rating procedure to assess explicit approach and avoidance reactions to these social stimuli. Our sample consisted of 24 depressed patients and 24 healthy controls. Data analysis indicated that depressed patients appear to understand the expression depicted on the emotional faces but react differently to these social cues. Female patients displayed stronger avoidance tendencies in the explicit condition whereas social withdrawal was less pronounced in the implicit condition. Our data suggest that a cognitive bias negatively influences the unimpaired automatic reactions to emotional expressions in depressed patients, and this bias may result in the characteristic social withdrawal.

Psychiatry Research, 2014

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) suffer from various impairments in emotional ... more Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) suffer from various impairments in emotional functioning such as affective instability, inappropriate anger and unstable relationships. These deficits may influence two fundamental motivational systems, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral activation system (BAS). To investigate behavioral intentions and possible impairments in BPD we applied an implicit joystick task to measure implicit behavioral tendencies in response to facial expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear and neutral) in 25 patients with BPD and matched 25 healthy controls (HC). Additionally, we evaluated explicit approach and avoidance reactions to these social stimuli, emotion recognition abilities and subjective behavioral ratings. Our data analysis suggests that, although BPD patients accurately identified facial emotional expressions and reacted to them similarly as HC in the joystick task, they had significantly stronger avoidance tendencies in the rating task, especially for happiness and fear. On top of this they exhibited increased BIS sensitivity and decreased BAS sensitivity in the self-report measures. Possible influences are maladaptive cognitive schemas, high negative affect, insecure attachment style and a negative evaluation bias. The observed dysfunctional avoidance ratings may influence the appraisal of socially relevant stimuli and therefore adds further knowledge on social interaction problems in BPD.

Psychiatry Research, 2013

Violent offending has often been associated with a lack of empathy, but experimental investigatio... more Violent offending has often been associated with a lack of empathy, but experimental investigations are rare. The present study aimed at clarifying whether violent offenders show a general empathy deficit or specific deficits regarding the separate subcomponents. To this end, we assessed three core components of empathy (emotion recognition, perspective taking, affective responsiveness) as well as skin conductance response (SCR) in a sample of 30 male violent offenders and 30 healthy male controls. Data analysis revealed reduced accuracy in violent offenders compared to healthy controls only in emotion recognition, and that a high number of violent assaults was associated with decreased accuracy in perspective taking for angry scenes. SCR data showed reduced physiological responses in the offender group specifically for fear and disgust stimuli during emotion recognition and perspective taking. In addition, higher psychopathy scores in the violent offender group were associated with reduced accuracy in affective responsiveness. This is the first study to show that mainly emotion recognition is deficient in violent offenders whereas the other components of empathy are rather unaffected. This divergent impact of violent offending on the subcomponents of empathy suggests that all three empathy components can be targeted by therapeutic interventions separately.

NeuroImage, 2014

a b s t r a c t 9 The anticipation of favourable or unfavourable events is a key component in our... more a b s t r a c t 9 The anticipation of favourable or unfavourable events is a key component in our daily life. However, the temporal 21 dynamics of anticipation processes in relation to brain activation are still not fully understood. 22 A modified version of the monetary incentive delay task was administered during separate functional magnetic 23 resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) sessions in the same 25 participants to assess antic-24 ipatory processes with a multi-modal neuroimaging set-up. 25 During fMRI, gain and loss anticipation were both associated with heightened activation in ventral striatum and 26 reward-related areas. EEG revealed most pronounced P300 amplitudes for gain anticipation, whereas CNV ampli-27 tudes distinguished neutral from gain and loss anticipation. Importantly, P300, but not CNV amplitudes, were 28 correlated to neural activation in the ventral striatum for both gain and loss anticipation. Larger P300 amplitudes 29 indicated higher ventral striatum blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response. 30 Early stimulus evaluation processes indexed by EEG seem to be positively related to higher activation levels in the 31 ventral striatum, indexed by fMRI, which are usually associated with reward processing. The current results, 32 however, point towards a more general motivational mechanism processing salient stimuli during anticipation. 33

Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2012

Endophenotypes are intermediate phenotypes which are considered a more promising marker of geneti... more Endophenotypes are intermediate phenotypes which are considered a more promising marker of genetic risk than illness itself. While previous research mostly used cognitive deficits, emotional functions are of greater relevance for bipolar disorder regarding the characteristic emotional hyper-reactability and deficient social-emotional competence. Hence, the aim of the present study was to clarify whether empathic abilities can serve as a possible endophenotype of bipolar disorder by applying a newly developed task in bipolar patients and their first-degree relatives. Three components of empathy (emotion recognition, perspective taking and affective responsiveness) have been assessed in a sample of 21 bipolar patients, 21 first-degree relatives and 21 healthy controls. Data analysis indicated significant differences between controls and patients for emotion recognition and affective responsiveness but not for perspective taking. This shows that in addition to difficulties in recognizing facial emotional expressions, bipolar patients have difficulties in identifying emotions they would experience in a given situation. However, the ability to take the perspective of another person in an emotional situation was intact but decreased with increasing severity of residual hypomanic and depressive symptoms. Relatives performed comparably bad on emotion recognition but did not differ from controls or patients in affective responsiveness. This study is the first to show that deficient emotion recognition is the only component of empathy which forms a possible endophenotype of bipolar disorder. This has important implications for prevention strategies. Furthermore, changes in affective responsiveness in first-degree relatives show a potential resilience marker.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2010

Emotional faces communicate both the emotional state and behavioral intentions of an individual. ... more Emotional faces communicate both the emotional state and behavioral intentions of an individual. They also activate behavioral tendencies in the perceiver, namely approach or avoidance. Here, we compared more automatic motor to more conscious rating responses to happy, sad, angry and disgusted faces in a healthy student sample. Happiness was associated with approach and anger with avoidance. However, behavioral tendencies in response to sadness and disgust were more complex. Sadness produced automatic approach but conscious withdrawal, probably influenced by interpersonal relations or personality. Disgust elicited withdrawal in the rating task whereas no significant tendency emerged in the joystick task, probably driven by expression style. Based on our results it is highly relevant to further explore actual reactions to emotional expressions and to differentiate between automatic and controlled processes since emotional faces are used in various kinds of studies. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of gender of poser effects when applying emotional expressions as stimuli.

British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2009

Objectives. The ability to recognize facial emotional expressions is a fundamental skill that is ... more Objectives. The ability to recognize facial emotional expressions is a fundamental skill that is necessary for successful social interaction. Previous studies examining this competency in patients with bipolar disorder have generated mixed results. Since bipolar patients show multiple psychosocial difficulties even after remission, this study was aimed at further elucidating emotion recognition deficits in bipolar patients.

... In contrast, depressed patients show a so-called “depressive realism” (Moritz et al., 2007) o... more ... In contrast, depressed patients show a so-called “depressive realism” (Moritz et al., 2007) or a “non self-serving” bias (Diez-Alegria et al., 2006). ... Diez-Alegria et al., 2006; C. Diez-Alegria, C. Vazquez, M. Nieto-Moreno, C. Valiente, F. Fuentenebro; ...