BACKGROUND Attentional biases, particularly difficulty inhibiting attention to negative stimuli, are implicated in risk for major depressive disorder (MDD). The current study examined a neural measure of attentional bias using a continuous index of visuocortical engagement (steady-state visual evoked potentials [SSVEPs]) before and after a negative mood induction in a population at high-risk fo...

Most definitions on presence have been based on cognitive or environmental aspects. However, we think that presence, like all human experiences, is influenced by emotions. EMMA project (IST-2001-39192) is aimed to study the nature of this relationship between emotions and presence. One of the main hypotheses proposed by EMMA is that emotions may enhance presence. In this line, the main objectiv...

Major depressive disorder aggregates within families, although the mechanisms of transfer across generations are not well understood. In light of converging biological and behavioral evidence that depressive symptoms are associated with impaired reward processing, we examined whether adolescent girls with a parental history of depression would also exhibit abnormal reward sensitivity. We perfor...

Cognitive reappraisal has been shown to be an effective strategy to regulate depressed mood in healthy and remitted depressed individuals. However, individuals currently suffering from a clinical depression often experience difficulties in utilizing this strategy. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine whether the efficacy of explicit cognitive reappraisal in major depressive disorder...

Sleep unbinds memories from their emotional learning context, protecting them from emotional interference due to a change of mood between learning and recall. According to the 'sleep to forget and sleep to remember' model, emotional unbinding takes place during rapid eye movement sleep. To test this hypothesis, we investigated emotional contextual interference effects after early versus late po...

Compulsive buying (CB) is a proposed disorder of dysregulated buying behaviour that is associated with high rates of Axis I comorbidity, particularly depression and anxiety. It has been proposed that purchasing behaviours may serve as a maladaptive means of alleviating negative affect in vulnerable individuals. The aim of the current study was to experimentally manipulate affect to test this mo...

Experiencing negative affect frequently precedes lapses in self-control for dieters, smokers, and drug addicts. Laboratory research has similarly shown that inducing negative emotional distress increases the consumption of food or drugs. One hypothesis for this finding is that emotional distress sensitizes the brain's reward system to appetitive stimuli. Using functional neuroimaging, we demons...

Although the induction of a safe place led to changes on physiological level with impact for emotional processing, effect emotion regulation is still unclear. This study examined effects self-distant reflecting strategy (safe induction) positive and negative affect compared self-immersed way (rumination task) autobiographic event. In student population, 54 healthy participants underwent recalle...