Adult aging is associated with difficulties in recognizing negative facial expressions such as fear and anger. However, happiness and disgust recognition is generally found to be less affected. Eye-tracking studies indicate that the diagnostic features of fearful and angry faces are situated in the upper regions of the face (the eyes), and for happy and disgusted faces in the lower regions (nose and mouth). These studies also indicate age-differences in visual scanning behavior, suggesting a role for attention in emotion recognition deficits in older adults. However, because facial features can be processed extrafoveally, and expression recognition occurs rapidly, eye-tracking has been questioned as a measure of attention during emotion recognition. In this study, the Moving Window Technique (MWT) was used as an alternative to the conventional eye-tracking technology. By restricting the visual field to a moveable window, this technique provides a more direct measure of attention. We found a strong bias to explore the mouth across both age groups. Relative to young adults, older adults focused less on the left eye, and marginally more on the mouth and nose. Despite these different exploration patterns, older adults were most impaired in recognition accuracy for disgusted expressions. Correlation analysis revealed that among older adults, more mouth exploration was associated with faster recognition of both disgusted and happy expressions. As a whole, these findings suggest that in aging there are both attentional differences and perceptual deficits contributing to less accurate emotion recognition.

Working memory (WM) functioning declines in old age. Due to its impact on many higher-order cognitive functions, investigating whether training can modify WM performance has recently been of great interest. We examined the relationship between behavioral performance and neural activity following five weeks of intensive WM training in 23 healthy older adults (M = 63.7 years). 12 participants received adaptive training (i.e. individually adjusted task difficulty to bring individuals to their performance maximum), whereas the others served as active controls (i.e. fixed low-level practice). Brain activity was measured before and after training, using fMRI, while subjects performed a WM task under two difficulty conditions. Although there were no training-related changes in WM during scanning, neocortical brain activity decreased post training and these decreases were larger in the adaptive training group than in the controls under high WM load. This pattern suggests intervention-related increases in neural efficiency. Further, there were disproportionate gains in the adaptive training group in trained as well as in non-trained (i.e. attention, episodic memory) tasks assessed outside the scanner, indicating the efficacy of the training regimen. Critically, the degree of training-related changes in brain activity (i.e. neocortical decreases and subcortical increases) was related to the maximum gain score achieved during the intervention period. This relationship suggests that the decreased activity, but also specific activity increases, observed were functionally relevant.

In an fMRI study, 20 younger and 20 healthy older adults were scanned while performing a spatial working-memory task under two levels of load. On a separate occasion, the same subjects underwent PET measurements using the radioligand [¹¹C] SCH23390 to determine dopamine D₁ receptor binding potential (BP) in caudate nucleus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The fMRI study revealed a significant load modulation of brain activity (higher load > lower load) in frontal and parietal regions for younger, but not older, adults. The PET measurements showed marked age-related reductions of D₁ BP in caudate and DLPFC. Statistical control of caudate and DLPFC D₁ binding eliminated the age-related reduction in load-dependent BOLD signal in left frontal cortex, and attenuated greatly the reduction in right frontal and left parietal cortex. These findings suggest that age-related alterations in dopaminergic neurotransmission may contribute to underrecruitment of task-relevant brain regions during working-memory performance in old age.

In normal aging, people are confronted with impairment in both socioemotional and cognitive abilities. Specifically, there are age-related declines in inhibitory processes that regulate attention towards irrelevant material. In last years, the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has mainly been related to improvements in several domains such as emotion recognition and memory, but to date the effects of oxytocin in aging remain largely unknown. In a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated whether oxytocin facilitates inhibitory processing in older adults compared to younger adults. In total, 41 older adults (51% women; age range 65-75 years) and 37 younger adults (49% women; age range 20-30 years) participated in this study two times, receiving a single intranasal dose of 40 IU of placebo and oxytocin in randomized order 45 minutes before engaging in the task. Participants were tested approximately a month apart and mostly at the same hour during both occasions. Inhibition was measured with a Go/NoGo task which included happy and neutral faces as targets (Go stimuli) and distractors (NoGo stimuli) shown on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to press a button any time they saw a target and remain passive when encountering a distractor. Preliminary results indicate effects for happy and neutral faces, but only in the distractor condition. For happy distractors, women rejected correctly happy faces more accurately than men did, both in the placebo and oxytocin conditions. A main effect of age was observed for the neutral distractors, where older adults were more successful in inhibiting responses than younger adults during oxytocin and placebo treatments. We did not observe effects of oxytocin in the different tasks. The role of oxytocin was not clear distinguished in the tasks. In sum, our findings showed that age and gender can influence inhibition but their effects depend on the displayed emotions. This suggests that the ability to inhibit interfering distractors may remain intact despite of age and that deficits in inhibition may be selective. The role of oxytocin in inhibition needs to be further investigated since it is possible that it is context dependent.

People constantly evaluate faces to obtain social information. However, the link between aging and social evaluation of faces is not well understood. Todorov and colleagues introduced a data-driven model defined by valence and dominance as the two main components underlying social judgments of faces. They also created a stimulus set consisting of computer-generated faces which systematically vary along various social dimensions (e.g., Todorov et al., 2013, Emotion, 13, 724-38). We utilized a selection of these facial stimuli to investigate age-related differences in judgments of the following dimensions: attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness. Participants rated how well the faces represented the intended social dimensions on 9-point scales ranging from not at all to extremely well. Results from 71 younger (YA; mean age = 23.42 years) and 60 older adults (OA; mean age = 69.19 years) showed that OA evaluated untrustworthy faces as more trustworthy, dislikeable faces as more likeable, and unattractive faces as more attractive compared to YA. OA also evaluated attractive faces as more attractive compared to YA, whereas YA did rate likeable and trustworthy faces as more likeable and trustworthy than did OA. In summary, our findings showed that OA evaluated negative social features less negatively compared to YA. This suggests that older and younger persons may use different cues for social evaluation of faces, and is in line with prior research suggesting age-related decline in the ability to recognize negative emotion expressions.

In everyday life throughout the life span, people frequently evaluate faces to obtain information crucial for social interactions. We investigated age-related differences in judgments of a wide range of social attributes based on facial appearance. Seventy-one younger and 60 older participants rated 196 computer-generated faces that systematically varied in facial features such as shape and reflectance to convey different intensity levels of seven social attributes (i.e., attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness). Older compared to younger participants consistently gave higher attractiveness ratings to faces representing both high and low levels of attractiveness. Older participants were also less sensitive to the likeability of faces and tended to evaluate faces representing low likeability as more likable. The age groups did, however, not differ substantially in their evaluations of the other social attributes. Results are in line with previous research showing that aging is associated with preference toward positive and away from negative information and extend this positivity effect to social perception of faces.

We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection (“remember” hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy.

Normal adult aging is associated with decline in some socioemotional abilities, such as the ability to recognize emotions in others, and age-related neurobiological processes may contribute to these deficits. There is increasing evidence that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays a key role in social cognition, including emotion recognition. The mechanisms through which oxytocin promotes emotion recognition are not well understood yet, and particularly in aging. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subjects design, we investigated the extent to which a single dose of 40 IU of intranasal oxytocin facilitates emotion recognition in 40 younger (M = 24.90 yrs., SD = 2.97, 48% women) and 40 older (M = 69.70 yrs., SD = 2.99, 55% women) men and women. During two fMRI sessions, participants viewed dynamic positive and negative emotional displays. Preliminary analyses show that younger participants recognized positive and negative emotions more accurately than older participants (p < .001), with this behavioral effect not modulated by oxytocin. In the brain data, however, we found an age x treatment interaction in medial prefrontal cortex (xyz [14, 14, 6], p = .007) and superior temporal gyrus (xyz [53, 9, 2], p = .031). In particular, oxytocin (vs. placebo) reduced activity in these regions for older participants, while it enhanced activity in these regions for younger participants. In line with previous research, these findings support the notion that the effects of oxytocin vary by context and individual factors (e.g., social proficiency, age).

In recent years, the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has mainly been related to improvements in domains such as emotion recognition and memory, but to date the effects of oxytocin in aging remain largely unknown. A major caveat in oxytocin research is that it is almost exclusively based on young men which may reflect an inadequate picture of the potential benefits of oxytocin administration. In a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated whether oxytocin affects the recognition of positive and negative stimuli differently in younger and older adults. Forty-four older adults (50% women; M= 69.82) and 44 younger adults (50% women; M= 24.75) participated in this study two times, receiving a single intranasal dose of 40 IUs of placebo and oxytocin in randomized order 40 minutes before engaging in the task. Participants watched short videoclips where actors displayed nine emotions: neutrality, happiness, pride, interest, relief, anger, despair, sadness, and disgust. Preliminary results indicate that oxytocin-induced reductions to negative emotions were found in bilateral fusiform gyrus (Z > 4.16, Family wise error corrected, pFWE < 0.009), hippocampus (Z > 4.53, pFWE < 0.002), insula (Z > 3.69, pFWE < 0.045), and superior temporal gyrus (Z > 4.34, pFWE < 0.008), as well as, right-lateralized reductions in the amygdala (Z = 3.73, pFWE = 0.005). These findings are in line with previous studies showing decreased brain activity to negative stimuli and suggest that this mechanism in not only present in younger adults but it can also be extended to an older population. Future studies should investigate how oxytocin impacts socioemotional and cognitive processes in elderly.

The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a prominentrole in social and emotional cognition. Findings suggest that exogenous intranasal oxytocin administration facilitates emotion recognition in humans, but individual and contextual differences may have moderating effects. A major caveat in this line of work is that it is predominantly based on young males, which limits current knowledge and potential for generalizability across gender. To uncover potential gender effects, the present study included younger and older men and women. Utilizing a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated the effects of a single-dose of 40 IUs intranasal oxytocin administration on emotion recognition of dynamic positive and negative stimuli in 32 men (mean age 45.78, sd. 22.87) and 39 women (mean 47.87, sd. 47.87), 40 minutes prior to MRI scanning. Preliminary analyses show that oxytocin induced brain activity reductions during exposure to negative (relative to positive) stimuli in women, while increasing brain activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in men. We speculate that the effects of oxytocin on emotion recognition may possibly be related to emotion regulation and mentalization processes, and that oxytocin is related to potential sex-differences in these processes. The results also raise concern that previous oxytocin literature on emotion recognition may be biased as there appears to be gender-differential effects of oxytocin on brain activity across adulthood that have been underestimated. In the next stage of the present study, we will investigate the interaction effects among treatment, sex, age, and presentation modality.

Intranasal oxytocin (OT) has previously been found to increase spirituality, an effect moderated by OT-related genotypes. This pre-registered study sought to conceptually replicate and extend those findings. Using a single dose of intranasal OT vs placebo (PL), we investigated experimental treatment effects, and moderation by OT-related genotypes on spirituality, mystical experiences, and the sensed presence of a sentient being. A more exploratory aim was to test for interactions between treatment and the personality disposition absorption on these spirituality-related outcomes. A priming plus sensory deprivation procedure that has facilitated spiritual experiences in previous studies was used. The sample (N = 116) contained both sexes and was drawn from a relatively secular context. Results failed to conceptually replicate both the main effects of treatment and the treatment by genotype interactions on spirituality. Similarly, there were no such effects on mystical experiences or sensed presence. However, the data suggested an interaction between treatment and absorption. Relative to PL, OT seemed to enhance spiritual experiences in participants scoring low in absorption and dampen spirituality in participants scoring high in absorption.

Age-related differences in emotion recognition have predominantly been investigated using static pictures of facial expressions, and positive emotions beyond happiness have rarely been included. The current study instead used dynamic facial and vocal stimuli, and included a wider than usual range of positive emotions. In Task 1, younger and older adults were tested for their abilities to recognize 12 emotions from brief video recordings presented in visual, auditory, and multimodal blocks. Task 2 assessed recognition of 18 emotions conveyed by non-linguistic vocalizations (e.g., laughter, sobs, and sighs). Results from both tasks showed that younger adults had significantly higher overall recognition rates than older adults. In Task 1, significant group differences (younger > older) were only observed for the auditory block (across all emotions), and for expressions of anger, irritation, and relief (across all presentation blocks). In Task 2, significant group differences were observed for 6 out of 9 positive, and 8 out of 9 negative emotions. Overall, results indicate that recognition of both positive and negative emotions show age-related differences. This suggests that the age-related positivity effect in emotion recognition may become less evident when dynamic emotional stimuli are used and happiness is not the only positive emotion under study.

Normal adult aging is associated with a decline in socioemotional abilities, and underlying these deficits are age-related neurobiological processes. There is increasing evidence that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays a key role in social cognition, specifically in the ability to recognize emotions. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled within-subjects design, we investigated the extent to which a single dose of 40 IU of intranasal oxytocin facilitates neural recruitment in younger and older adults during negative compared to positive dynamic multimodal expressions. Based on the literature, several regions of interest were selected prior analyses: insula, amygdala, caudate head, fusiform gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, medial orbitofrontal cortex, ventral medial prefrontal cortex, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Behavioral data showed that younger adults outperformed older adults. and higher accuracy scores were observed during the PL condition compared to the OT condition. This was further qualified by the brain data, where OT induced brain activity reductions in the fusiform gyrus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to negative compared to positive expressions. Both age groups showed hypoactivity in most regions of interest during auditory stimuli compared to visual and multimodal stimuli. In line with previous research, these findings suggest that the effects of oxytocin may vary due to context, social proficiency, and individual factors (i.e. age). Future studies should target how age, presentation modality, and oxytocin interact.

Age-related differences in emotion recognition have predominantly been investigated usingstatic pictures of facial expressions. Previous studies have also mainly studied recognition ofnegative emotions, and positive emotions beyond happiness have rarely been included. Thecurrent study instead used dynamic facial and vocal stimuli, and included a wider than usualrange of positive emotions. In Task 1, younger and older adults were tested for their abilities torecognize 12 positive and negative emotions from brief video recordings presented in visual,auditory and multimodal blocks. Task 2 assessed recognition of 18 positive and negativeemotions conveyed by non-linguistic vocalizations (e.g., laughter, sobs, and sighs). Resultsfrom both tasks showed that younger adults had higher overall recognition rates than olderadults. In Task 1, significant age-related differences (younger > older) were only observed inthe auditory condition, and for relief, anger, and irritation. In Task 2, significant groupdifferences were instead observed for most of the emotions. Overall, results indicate thatrecognition of both positive and negative emotions show age-related differences. This suggeststhat the age-related positivity effect in emotion recognition may become less evident whendynamic emotional stimuli are used and happiness is not the only positive emotion under study.

Background: Computerized trainings for emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) have shown to be successful, however, are often lacking external validity. The use of still pictures, the focus on the face, and limited response sets limit generalizability of findings. Further, trainings often use between-subjectsdesigns and short time intervals between, or same items for ERA training and outcome measure. In response, we developed and evaluated a multi-modal ERA training in a randomized controlled trial.

Method: Seventy-two undergraduate students (M=24.7, SD=7.69, 75% women) signed up for the study; 68 completed all measurements. They were randomly assigned to the multimodal ERA training or one of two control conditions. The ERA outcome measure (ERAM; Laukka et al., 2015) assesses 12 emotions separately in three modalities (audio, video, audio-video) using 72 dynamic stimuli. The multimodal training consisted and immediate and extensive feedback using different items. The last training session and the ERA outcome measurement lay approximately one week apart.

Results and Conclusions: A repeated-measures ANOVA with baseline as covariate showed a main effect of training on the ERAM, F(2/63) = 8.04, p < .001, ηp2 = .20. Bonferroni-corrected posthoc tests revealed the change for the multimodal training was significantly superior to the control conditions (p=.001; p=.003). Detailed results per modality and descriptive statistics will be presented. Due to its multimodal and dynamic nature, delay between training and outcome measure and use of different items, the multimodal training is a promising tool for training ERA in different contexts, like clinical settings, assessment procedures or law enforcement training.

This study presents findings about the effectiveness of two computerized training-programs for emotion recognition accuracy that were evaluated in a double-blind randomized controlled study with repeated measures design. Both trainings are effective in training emotion recognition accuracy. The trainings and results are presented in detail and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction: Psychotherapists’ emotional and empathic competencies have a positive influence on psychotherapy outcome and alliance. However, it is doubtful whether psychotherapy education in itself leads to improvements in trainee psychotherapists’ emotion recognition accuracy (ERA), which is an essential part of these competencies.

Methods: In a randomized, controlled, double-blind study (N = 68), we trained trainee psychotherapists (57% psychodynamic therapy and 43% cognitive behavioral therapy) to detect non-verbal emotional expressions in others using standardized computerized trainings – one for multimodal emotion recognition accuracy and one for micro expression recognition accuracy – and compared their results to an active control group one week after the training (n = 60) and at the one-year follow up (n = 55). The participants trained once weekly during a three-week period. As outcome measures, we used a multimodal emotion recognition accuracy task, a micro expression recognition accuracy task and an emotion recognition accuracy task for verbal and non-verbal (combined) emotional expressions in medical settings.

Results: The results of mixed multilevel analyses suggest that the multimodal emotion recognition accuracy training led to significantly steeper increases than the other two conditions from pretest to the posttest one week after the last training session. When comparing the pretest to follow-up differences in slopes, the superiority of the multimodal training group was still detectable in the unimodal audio modality and the unimodal video modality (in comparison to the control training group), but not when considering the multimodal audio-video modality or the total score of the multimodal emotion recognition accuracy measure. The micro expression training group showed a significantly steeper change trajectory from pretest to posttest compared to the control training group, but not compared to the multimodal training group. However, the effect vanished again until the one-year follow-up. There were no differences in change trajectories for the outcome measure about emotion recognition accuracy in medical settings.

Discussion: We conclude that trainee psychotherapists’ emotion recognition accuracy can be effectively trained, especially multimodal emotion recognition accuracy, and suggest that the changes in unimodal emotion recognition accuracy (audio-only and video-only) are long-lasting. Implications of these findings for the psychotherapy education are discussed.

Nonverbal emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) is a central feature of successful communication and interaction, and is of importance for many professions. We developed and evaluated two ERA training programs—one focusing on dynamic multimodal expressions (audio, video, audio-video) and one focusing on facial micro expressions. Sixty-seven subjects were randomized to one of two experimental groups (multimodal, micro expression) or an active control group (emotional working memory task). Participants trained once weekly with a brief computerized training program for three consecutive weeks. Pre-post outcome measures consisted of a multimodal ERA task, a micro expression recognition task, and a task about patients' emotional cues. Post measurement took place approximately a week after the last training session. Non-parametric mixed analyses of variance using the Aligned Rank Transform were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the training programs. Results showed that multimodal training was significantly more effective in improving multimodal ERA compared to micro expression training or the control training; and the micro expression training was significantly more effective in improving micro expression ERA compared to the other two training conditions. Both pre-post effects can be interpreted as large. No group differences were found for the outcome measure about recognizing patients' emotion cues. There were no transfer effects of the training programs, meaning that participants only improved significantly for the specific facet of ERA that they had trained on. Further, low baseline ERA was associated with larger ERA improvements. Results are discussed with regard to methodological and conceptual aspects, and practical implications and future directions are explored.

The ability to recognize and work with patients’ emotions is considered an important part of most psychotherapy approaches. Surprisingly, there is little systematic research on psychotherapists' ability to recognize other people’s emotional expressions. In this study, we compared trainee psychotherapists’ non-verbal emotion recognition accuracy to a control group of undergraduate students at two time points: at the beginning and at the end of one and a half years of theoretical and practical psychotherapy training. Emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) was assessed using two standardized computer tasks, one for recognition of dynamic multimodal (facial, bodily, vocal) expressions and one for recognition of facial micro expressions. Initially, 154 participants enrolled in the study, 72 also took part in the follow-up. The trainee psychotherapists were moderately better at recognizing multimodal expressions, and slightly better at recognizing facial micro expressions, than the control group at the first test occasion. However, mixed multilevel modeling indicated that the ERA change trajectories for the two groups differed significantly. While the control group improved in their ability to recognize multimodal emotional expressions from pretest to follow-up, the trainee psychotherapists did not. Both groups improved their micro expression recognition accuracy, but the slope for the control group was significantly steeper than the trainee psychotherapists’. These results suggest that psychotherapy education and clinical training do not always contribute to improved emotion recognition accuracy beyond what could be expected due to time or other factors. Possible reasons for that finding as well as implications for the psychotherapy education are discussed.  

The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a role in social cognition and affective processing. The neural processes underlying these effects are not well understood. Modulation of connectivity strength between subcortical and cortical regions has been suggested as one possible mechanism. The current study investigated effects of intranasal oxytocin administration on resting-state functional connectivity between amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), as two regions involved in social-cognitive and affective processing. Going beyond previous work that largely examined young male participants, our study comprised young and older men and women to identify age and sex variations in oxytocin’s central processes. This approach was based on known hormonal differences among these groups and emerging evidence of sex differences in oxytocin’s effects on amygdala reactivity and age-by-sex-modulated effects of oxytocin in affective processing. In a double-blind design, 79 participants were randomly assigned to self-administer either intranasal oxytocin or placebo before undergoing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Using a targeted region-to-region approach, resting-state functional connectivity strength between bilateral amygdala and mPFC was examined. Participants in the oxytocin compared to the placebo group and men compared to women had overall greater amygdala–mPFC connectivity strength at rest. These main effects were qualified by a significant three-way interaction: while oxytocin compared to placebo administration increased resting-state amygdala–mPFC connectivity for young women, oxytocin did not significantly influence connectivity in the other age-by-sex subgroups. This study provides novel evidence of age-by-sex differences in how oxytocin modulates resting-state brain connectivity, furthering our understanding of how oxytocin affects brain networks at rest.

Emotions play a central role in every human life from the moment we are born until we die. They prepare the body for action, highlight what should be noticed and remembered, and guide decisions and actions. As emotions are central to daily functioning, it is important to understand how aging affects perception, memory, experience, as well as regulation of emotions. The Frontiers research topic Emotion and Aging: Evidence from Brain and Behavior takes a step into uncovering emotional aging considering both brain and behavioral processes. The contributions featured in this issue adopt innovative theoretical perspectives and use novel methodological approaches to target a variety of topics that can be categorized into three overarching questions: How do cognition and emotion interact in aging in brain and behavior? What are behavioral and brain-related moderators of emotional aging? Does emotion-regulatory success as reflected in brain and behavior change with age? In this perspective paper we discuss theoretical innovation, methodological approach, and scientific advancement of the thirteen papers in the context of the broader literature on emotional aging. We conclude by reflecting on topics untouched and future directions to take.

To study emotional aging is to study a very multi-faceted concept. In particular, the study of emotion and aging covers a wide range of topics. Taking a closer look, domains of functioning can be differentiated such as pertaining to the experiential nature of emotion or its regulation, as well as social-cognitive processes associated with the perception of emotion in others or emotion-related attention and memory retrieval. Importantly, evidence over the last two decades suggests that not all of these functional domains are negatively affected by the aging process. Rather late-life development in emotion-related functional domains is characterized by multi-directionality, in that aging seems to be associated with deterioration in abilities related to emotion perception and increased difficulty remembering (particularly negative compared to positive) emotional information, while emotional experience and emotion-regulatory capacities appear to remain relatively preserved or even improve with age.

Attending to and understanding one's own feelings are components of meta mood and constitute important socio-affective skills across the entire lifespan. Growing evidence suggests a modulatory role of the neuropeptide oxytocin on various socio-affective processes. Going beyond previous work that almost exclusively examined young men and perceptions of emotions in others, the current study investigated effects of intranasal oxytocin on meta-mood in young and older men and women. In a double-blind between-group design, participants were randomly assigned to self-administer either intranasal oxytocin or a placebo before responding to items from the Trait Meta Mood Scale (TMMS) about attention to feelings and clarity of feelings. In contrast to older women, oxytocin relative to placebo increased attention to feelings in older men. Oxytocin relative to placebo enhanced meta-mood in young female participants but reduced it in older female participants. This pattern of findings supports an age- and sex-differential modulatory function of the neuropeptide oxytocin on meta-mood, possibly associated with neurobiological differences with age and sex.

The ability to read and appropriately respond to emotions in others is central for successful social interaction. Young and older adults are better at identifying positive than negative facial expressions and also expressions of young than older faces. Little, however, is known about the neural processes associated with reading different emotions, particularly in faces of different ages, in samples of young and older adults. During fMRI, young and older participants identified expressions in happy, neutral, and angry young and older faces. The results suggest a functional dissociation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in reading facial emotions that is largely comparable in young and older adults: Both age groups showed greater vmPFC activity to happy compared to angry or neutral faces, which was positively correlated with expression identification for happy compared to angry faces. In contrast, both age groups showed greater activity in dmPFC to neutral or angry than happy faces which was negatively correlated with expression identification for neutral compared to happy faces. A similar region of dmPFC showed greater activity for older than young faces, but no brain-behavior correlations. Greater vmPFC activity in the present study may reflect greater affective processing involved in reading happy compared to neutral or angry faces. Greater dmPFC activity may reflect more cognitive control involved in decoding and/or regulating negative emotions associated with neutral or angry than happy, and older than young, faces.

Age constitutes a salient feature of a face and signals group membership. There is evidence of greater attention to and better memory for own-age than other-age faces. However, little is known about the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying processing differences for own-age vs. other-age faces. Even less is known about the impact of emotion expressed in faces on such own-age effects. Using fMRI, the present study examined brain activity while young and older adult participants identified expressions of neutral, happy, and angry young and older faces. Across facial expressions, medial prefrontal cortex, insula, and (for older participants) amygdala showed greater activity to own-age than other-age faces. These own-age effects in ventral medial prefrontal cortex and insula held for neutral and happy faces, but not for angry faces. This novel and intriguing finding suggests that processing of negative facial emotions under some conditions overrides age-of-face effects.

The oxytocin (OT) system is involved in various aspects of social cognition and prosocial behavior. Specifically, OT has been examined in the context of social memory, emotion recognition, cooperation, trust, empathy, and bonding, and-though evidence is somewhat mixed-intranasal OT appears to benefit aspects of socioemotional functioning. However, most of the extant data on aging and OT is from animal research and human OT research has focused largely on young adults. As such, though we know that various socioemotional capacities change with age, we know little about whether age-related changes in the OT system may underlie age-related differences in socioemotional functioning. In this review, we take a genetic-neuro-behavioral approach and evaluate current evidence on age-related changes in the OT system as well as the putative effects of these alterations on age-related socioemotional functioning. Looking forward, we identify informational gaps and propose an Age-Related Genetic, Neurobiological, Sociobehavioral Model of Oxytocin (AGeNeS-OT model) which may structure and inform investigations into aging-related genetic, neural, and sociocognitive processes related to OT. As an exemplar of the use of the model, we report exploratory data suggesting differences in socioemotional processing associated with genetic variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) in samples of young and older adults. Information gained from this arena has translational potential in depression, social stress, and anxiety-all of which have high relevance in aging-and may contribute to reducing social isolation and improving well-being of individuals across the lifespan.

Oxytocin (OT) is a crucial chemical modulator of social behavior, and intranasal OT administration has potential as treatment for social deficits. Considerably less is known about OT’s effects on non-social cognition, a functional domain of particular relevance in aging. Brain mechanisms underlying OT’s benefits are not well understood but recent animal work suggests that repeated OT administration induces brain changes. To test this neuroplastic role of OT on the human brain and its potential for cognitive improvement in aging, we conducted a randomized double-blind study in older men (> 56 years), with 34 participants self-administering either 24 IUs OT or placebo (P) twice daily. Before and after 4-weeks intranasal administration, participants underwent MRI and processing speed assessment. Using voxel-based morphometry, gray matter (GM) volume was measured on T1-weighted anatomical images. Age, education, physical health, and image quality served as covariates and family-wise error rate determined statistical significance in regions of interest. Analyses were performed without awareness of the assigned treatment labels. Significant interactions between treatment (OT vs. P) and time (pre- vs. post-intervention) on GM volume for left amygdala, hippocampus, and putamen suggested increased regional GM volume following OT but not P. Further, OT-induced enlargement in putamen was associated with improved processing speed, while there was no brain−behavior correlation in the P group. These findings support the notion that amygdala, hippocampus, and putamen are key targets of OT’s neuroplastic potential on the human brain and chronic OT administration may constitute a potential treatment in counteracting cognitive decline in aging.  

The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a prominent role in social and emotional cognition. Findings suggest that intranasal oxytocin administration facilitates emotion recognition in humans, but individual and contextual differences may have moderating effects. A major caveat in this line of work is its predominant focus on young males, which limits current knowledge and generalizability across gender. To uncover potential gender effects, the present study included 32 men (mean age 45.78, sd. 22.87) and 39 women (mean 47.87, sd. 22.59). Utilizing a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects design, participants self-administered a single-dose of 40 IUs intranasal oxytocin 40 minutes prior to completion of a dynamic emotion recognition task in the MRI scanning. The task paradigm used positive and negative stimuli from the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayals Core Set. Preliminary analyses show that oxytocin induced dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity reductions during exposure to negative (relative to positive) stimuli in women, while dmPCF activity was increased under this condition in men. We observed no effect of sex in the behavioral data, however, the results show a similar trend as in brain data. We speculate that the effects of oxytocin on brain activity during emotion recognition may be related to emotion-regulatory and mentalization processes. The observed gender-differential modulatory role of oxytocin raises concern of a bias in the previous oxytocin literature on emotion recognition and associated brain activity by neglecting women in the examination. Next, we will determine the role of age effects on gender-bytreatment interactions, as well as consider modality of the emotion stimulus presentation.  

Many studies in affective neuroscience rely on statistical procedures designed to estimate population averages and base their main conclusions on group averages. However, the obvious unit of analysis in affective neuroscience is the individual, not the group, because emotions are individual phenomena that typically vary across individuals. Conclusions based on group averages may therefore be misleading or wrong, if interpreted as statements about emotions of an individual, or meaningless, if interpreted as statements about the group, which has no emotions. We therefore advocate the Single-N design as the default strategy in research on emotions, testing one or several individuals extensively with the primary purpose of obtaining results at the individual level. In neuroscience, the equivalent to the Single-N design is deep imaging, the emerging trend of extensive measurements of activity in single brains. Apart from the fact that individuals react differently to emotional stimuli, they also vary in shape and size of their brains. Group-based analysis of brain imaging data therefore refers to an “average brain” that was activated in a way that may not be representative of the physiology of any of the tested individual brains, nor of how these brains responded to the experimental stimuli. Deep imaging avoids such group-averaging artifacts by simply focusing on the individual brain. This methodological shift toward individual analysis has already opened new research areas in fields like vision science. Inspired by this, we call for a corresponding shift in affective neuroscience, away from group averages, and toward experimental designs targeting the individual.

Older adults comprise both the fastest growing population segment in industrialized nations and the majority of political and industry leaders. Regardless of social status, older adults face a constant flow of highly consequential decisions. These decisions are often social in nature, even when they primarily concern health, finance, or politics; in particular, they often require putting trust in others. However, older adults’ social decision making processes relating to trust have not been well researched yet. Trust is an important aspect of maintaining social supports and maintenance of social supports is health protective. This is of particular concern in older adults as aging is linked to increased social loss, isolation, and loneliness. Evidence has indicated that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) is linked to several aspects of socioemotional functioning including trust. There is emerging evidence of a possible deficit in OT in older, specifically male, adults. Intranasally administered OT before a trust game has resulted in young adults acting in a more trusting, but not gullible manner. However, the potential effects of OT administration on trust game performance in older adults is unknown. We compared older (N = 54, 56% female) and younger adults’ (N = 48, 48% female) performance on a Trust/Lottery game after intranasal administration of either OT or placebo (P). Participants played the role of investors with ostensible same age social partners (trust) or a computer (lottery). At the beginning of each game investors received monetary units to invest in increments. They were instructed that if money was sent it would be tripled and then the investee (ostensible social partner) would be able to send an amount, or none, back or the lottery would be played (in the lottery condition). The probabilities of the trustee returning behavior in both the trust and lottery conditions were drawn from the same probability distributions, thus the participants faced the same objective risk but only interacted socially in the trust condition. Twelve trust and 12 lottery games were played in a pseudo-randomly, counterbalanced fashion. After half of the trust and lottery trials were played, a feedback screen was presented informing participants that in both the trust and lottery conditions only 50% of their investments bore returns, signifying 50% chance of trust breach or lottery success. While no effects of OT were detected, trust trials older adults increased their investments post betrayal while younger adults decreased their investments (F = 5.53, p = .021). No such differences were found in the lottery game. These results may indicate that older adults are more forgiving of breaching trust than younger adults. However, these results may also indicate vulnerability to being taken advantage of in a social context. To address these interpretations, research examining older adults’ goals in social decision making contexts is warranted.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has been associated with hyper-reactivity in limbic brain regions like the amygdala, both during symptom provocation and emotional face processing tasks. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study we sought to examine brain regions implicated in emotional face processing, and the connectivity between them, in patients with SAD (n=14) compared with healthy controls (n=12). We furthermore aimed to relate brain reactivity and connectivity to self-reported social anxiety symptom severity. SAD patients exhibited hyper-reactivity in the bilateral fusiform gyrus in response to fearful faces, as well as greater connectivity between the fusiform gyrus and amygdala, and decreased connectivity between the fusiform gyrus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Within the SAD group, social anxiety severity correlated positively with amygdala reactivity to emotional faces, amygdala-fusiform connectivity and connectivity between the amygdala and superior temporal sulcus (STS). These findings point to a pivotal role for the fusiform gyrus in SAD neuropathology, and further suggest that altered amygdala-fusiform and amygdala-STS connectivity could underlie previous findings of aberrant socio-emotional information processing in this anxiety disorder.

Functional neuroimaging of social anxiety disorder (SAD) support altered neural activation to threat-provoking stimuli focally in the fear network, while structural differences are distributed over the temporal and frontal cortices as well as limbic structures. Previous neuroimaging studies have investigated the brain at the voxel level using mass-univariate methods which do not enable detection of more complex patterns of activity and structural alterations that may separate SAD from healthy individuals. Support vector machine (SVM) is a supervised machine learning method that capitalizes on brain activation and structural patterns to classify individuals. The aim of this study was to investigate if it is possible to discriminate SAD patients (n = 14) from healthy controls (n = 12) using SVM based on (1) functional magnetic resonance imaging during fearful face processing and (2) regional gray matter volume. Whole brain and region of interest (fear network) SVM analyses were performed for both modalities. For functional scans, significant classifications were obtained both at whole brain level and when restricting the analysis to the fear network while gray matter SVM analyses correctly classified participants only when using the whole brain search volume. These results support that SAD is characterized by aberrant neural activation to affective stimuli in the fear network, while disorder-related alterations in regional gray matter volume are more diffusely distributed over the whole brain. SVM may thus be useful for identifying imaging biomarkers of SAD.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has been associated with aberrant processing of socio-emotional stimuli and failure to adaptively regulate emotion, corroborated by functional neuroimaging studies. However, only a few studies of structural brain abnormalities in SAD have been reported, and among these only one investigated cortical thickness. In the present study we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in conjunction with an automated method to measure cortical thickness in patients with SAD (n=14) and healthy controls (n=12). Results showed significantly increased thickness of the left inferior temporal cortex in SAD patients relative to controls. Within the patient group, a negative association was found between social anxiety symptom severity and thickness of the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex. The observed alterations in brain structure may help explain previous findings of dysfunctional regulation and processing of emotion in SAD.

It is disputed whether anxiety disorders, like social anxiety disorder, are characterized by serotonin over- or underactivity. Here, we evaluated whether our recent finding of elevated neural serotonin synthesis rate in patients with social anxiety disorder could be reproduced in a separate cohort, and whether allelic variation in the tryptophan hydroxylase-2 (TPH2) G-703T polymorphism relates to differences in serotonin synthesis assessed with positron emission tomography. Eighteen social anxiety disorder patients and six healthy controls were scanned during 60 minutes in a resting state using positron emission tomography and 5-hydroxy-L-[β -¹¹C]tryptophan, [¹¹C]5-HTP, a substrate of the second enzymatic step in serotonin synthesis. Parametric images were generated, using the reference Patlak method, and analysed using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM8). Blood samples for genotyping of the TPH2 G-703T polymorphism were obtained from 16 social anxiety disorder patients (T carriers: n=5, GG carriers: n=11). A significantly elevated [¹¹C]5-HTP accumulation rate, indicative of enhanced decarboxylase activity and thereby serotonin synthesis capacity, was detected in social anxiety disorder patients compared with controls in the hippocampus and basal ganglia nuclei and, at a more lenient (uncorrected) statistical threshold, in the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex. In patients, the serotonin synthesis rate in the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex was significantly elevated in TPH2 T carriers in comparison with GG homozygotes. Our results support that social anxiety disorder entails an overactive presynaptic serotonergic system that, in turn, seems functionally influenced by the TPH2 G-703T polymorphism in emotionally relevant brain regions.

Compared with nonarousing stimuli, arousing stimuli enhance memory performance. The most robust effects have been reported for negative stimuli, "the negativity effect," although a number of mediating factors prevent definitive conclusions, for example, age, gender, memory task, retention period, and alternative arousal measures. To clarify whether the negativity effect is robust across age, gender, and time, we studied incidental recognition of neutral and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999) in healthy younger and older adults-women and men-after a 1-year retention interval. Memory performance was related to 2 arousal measures at encoding, skin conductance response (SCR), and intensity rating of unpleasantness. The results showed weaker overall memory performance for older adults compared with younger adults. The negativity effect on accuracy (d') was gender dependent and age independent. In contrast, the negativity effect on response bias (c) interacted with age, but not gender, being weaker for older adults. Despite significant differences in arousal (SCR and arousal rating) between negative and neutral pictures, the correlations between arousal measures and memory performance were weak. Controlling for age and gender, a small negative partial correlation was found between arousal ratings and accuracy. The results extend previous studies by relating long-term recognition to both age and gender as well as to arousal at encoding.

Introduction: Even though the occurrence of sleep problems increases with age, few studies have focused on the cognitive effects of acute sleep deprivation in elderly. Most previous research indicate that, compared to young, older adults show less impairment in e.g. attention after sleep deprivation. However, little is known of whether the same pattern holds for higher cognitive functions. In addition, while old age is usually related to a general decrease in working memory abilities, performance on working memory tasks may differ depending on the emotional valence of the stimuli, where positive stimuli seem to be beneficial for working memory performance in older adults. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on emotional working memory in older adults using two levels of working memory load.

Materials and methods: A healthy sample of 48 old adults (M_Age=66.69 years, SD_Age=3.44 years) was randomized into a total sleep deprivation group (TSD; n=24) or a sleep control group (SC; n=24). They performed a working memory task (n-back) containing positive, negative and neutral pictures in a low (1-back) and a high (3-back) working memory load condition. Performance was measured as Accuracy (d'), Omissions and Reaction Time (RT).

Results: For the d' and Omissions we performed two separate 2x2x3 (sleep, working memory load, valence) repeated measures analyses of variance (rmANOVA). For the RTs, we applied a mixed-effects model. For both d' and RT we found no effect of sleep deprivation (Ps > .05). For valence, we found main effects on both d' (F_1,46 = 5.56, P=.005) and RT (F_1,95.7 = 4.84, P=.01). d' did not differ for positive and neutral pictures, but was in both cases significantly better than for negative pictures. RTs were significantly faster for positive pictures. However, a working memory load^∗valence interaction (F_1,95.7 = 4.50, P=.01) further revealed an effect of valence in the low, but not in the high load condition. In the low load condition, RTs were faster for positive than for neutral pictures and faster for neutral than for negative pictures. There was no significant effect of Omissions.

Conclusions: Our results showed that emotional working memory performance was not significantly affected by one night of sleep deprivation in older adults, which contrast what we found in a sample of young adults from the same project. In line with previous research, our results indicate a beneficial effect of positive stimuli on working memory in older adults. This effect was present in both groups and most pronounced for reaction times in the condition with a lower cognitive demand. We can conclude that, among older adults, the working memory performance is not impaired by sleep deprivation and that the benefits of positive stimuli on working memory seem intact. These findings contribute to a better understanding of older adults' cognitive functioning after sleep deprivation.

Background: Older adults perform better in tasks which include positive stimuli, referred to as the positivity effect. However, recent research suggests that the positivity effect could be attenuated when additional challenges such as stress or cognitive demands are introduced. Moreover, it is well established that older adults are relatively resilient to many of the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. Our aim was to investigate if the positivity effect in older adults is affected by one night of total sleep deprivation using an emotional working memory task.

Methods: A healthy sample of 48 older adults (60-72 years) was either sleep deprived for one night (n = 24) or had a normal night's sleep (n = 24). They performed an emotional working memory n-back (n = 1 and 3) task containing positive, negative and neutral pictures.

Results: Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was best for positive stimuli and worst for negative stimuli. This positivity effect was not altered by sleep deprivation. Results also showed that, despite significantly increased sleepiness, there was no effect of sleep deprivation on working memory performance. A working memory load x valence interaction on the reaction times revealed that the beneficial effect of positive stimuli was only present in the 1-back condition.

Conclusion: While the positivity effect and general working memory abilities in older adults are intact after one night of sleep deprivation, increased cognitive demand attenuates the positivity effect on working memory speed.

In our daily perception of facial expressions, we depend on an ability to generalize across the varied distances at which they may appear. This is important to how we interpret the quality and the intensity of the expression. Previous research has not investigated whether this so called perceptual constancy also applies to the experienced intensity of facial expressions. Using a psychophysical measure (Borg CR100 scale) the present study aimed to further investigate perceptual constancy of happy and angry facial expressions at varied sizes, which is a proxy for varying viewing distances. Seventy-one (42 females) participants rated the intensity and valence of facial expressions varying in distance and intensity. The results demonstrated that the perceived intensity (PI) of the emotional facial expression was dependent on the distance of the face and the person perceiving it. An interaction effect was noted, indicating that close-up faces are perceived as more intense than faces at a distance and that this effect is stronger the more intense the facial expression truly is. The present study raises considerations regarding constancy of the PI of happy and angry facial expressions at varied distances.

Objectives: Emotional stimuli differently affect working memory (WM) performance. As sleep deprivation has a known impact on both emotion and WM our aim was to investigate how one night without sleep affects emotional WM performance. Methods: Healthy subjects (n = 56; age 18–30 years) were randomized to a total sleep deprivation (TSD) or a rested control (RC) condition. Subjects rated their affective state and performed a 1 and a 3-back WM task consisting of neutral, positive and negative pictures at 3 pm or 6 pm (balanced) the day after sleep manipulation. Accuracy (d’) and target response time (RT) were used as outcomes. Results: In the TSD condition, subjects rated themselves as less positive (P = 0.006) but not more negative than in the RC condition. In the WM task, TSD had a detrimental effect on accuracy (P = 0.03) regardless of difficulty. Moreover, accuracy was higher in the 1-back than in the 3-back (P < 0.001) and higher for neutral compared to both negative and positive stimuli (Ps < 0.05). RT was faster for positive compared to negative and neutral stimuli (Ps < 0.05). The latter effect was particularly pronounced in the TSD condition as shown by a condition*valence interaction (P < 0.03). Conclusions: One night of total sleep loss impaired emotional WM accuracy. Noticeable, RT was faster for positive stimuli compared to negative and neutral stimuli. This effect was particularly pronounced after sleep loss. This suggests that sleep loss strengthens the opposing effects of positive and negative stimuli on WM performance, possibly due to increased emotion reactivity.

The emotional dysregulation and impaired working memory found after sleep loss can have severe implications for our daily functioning. Considering the intertwined relationship between emotion and cognition in stimuli processing, there could be further implications of sleep deprivation in high‐complex emotional situations. Although studied separately, this interaction between emotion and cognitive processes has been neglected in sleep research. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of 1 night of sleep deprivation on emotional working memory. Sixty‐one healthy participants (mean age: 23.4 years) were either sleep deprived for 1 night (n = 30) or had a normal night’s sleep (n = 31). They performed an N‐back task with two levels of working memory load (1‐back and 3‐back) using positive, neutral and negative picture scenes. Sleep deprivation, compared with full night sleep, impaired emotional working memory accuracy, but not reaction times. The sleep‐deprived participants, but not the controls, responded faster to positive than to negative and neutral pictures. The effect of sleep deprivation was similar for both high and low working memory loads. The results showed that although detrimental in terms of accuracy, sleep deprivation did not impair working memory speed. In fact, our findings indicate that positive stimuli may facilitate working memory processing speed after sleep deprivation.

Introduction: As individuals age, there is an increased focus on social relationships (Carstensen, 2006). However, age-related changes in the brain can interfere with social functioning (Ebner, et al, 2012; Mather, et al, 2005; Ruffman, et al, 2008). While age-related changes in cognition are well studied, social-cognitive changes in aging are still underinvestigated, especially the brain mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. The administration of intranasal oxytocin (OT) has the potential to modulate social cognition (De Dreu, 2014) by altering BOLD signal in regions of the social brain (eg. amygdala and vmPFC) (Ebner, et al, 2016). Currently, there is very little known about the role of OT in human development in aging (Campbell, et al, 2014; Huffmeijer, et al, 2012). Methods: 40 young (18–31 years, 50% female) and 39 older (63–81 years, 59% female) were randomly assigned (in a double-blind design) to self-administer either 24 UIs of intranasal OT or placebo (P) 70-90 minutes prior to resting-state fMRI. T1-weighted anatomical reference images, using an MP-RAGE sequence (sagittal plane, FOV = 240 mm × 240 mm × 170; 1 × 1 × 1 mm isotropic voxels), and functional gradient-echo-planar imaging (EPI) data, during an open-eye, white cross-hair on black background, 8 minute resting-state scan (38 interleaved slices, TR 2 sec, TE 30 msec, FOV 252 × 252 × 133 mm, 80 × 80 × 38 mm matrix, flip angle 90°, in plane resolution of 3.15 × 3.15 mm, slice thickness 3.5 mm, 0 mm skip), were acquired with a 3T Philips Achieva MR Scanner using a 32-channel head coil. Preprocessing, including slice time correction, motion correction with artifact rejection, spatial normalization, and smoothing with an 8 mm Gaussian kernel, were implemented with Functional Connectivity Toolbox (Whitfield-Gabrieli, et al, 2012; http://www.nitrc.org/projects/conn/). Results: Younger individuals showed significantly greater overall anterior cingulate (AC) activity in P condition (p=.044). Intranasal OT administration significantly increased activity in the AC in both younger and older women (p=.024), but not men, when compared to P. The effect was slightly greater in older women than younger, but this effect was not significant potentially due to sample size.There were no significant gender effects in AC activity during rest between males and females in either younger or older P control groups. Conclusions: Intranasal OT has differential gender effects on AC activity during resting-state, increasing activity in women but not men. Additionally, there is evidence for age differences in overall AC activity at rest.

Flow is the subjective experience of effortless attention, reduced self-awareness, and enjoyment that typically occurs during optimal task performance. Previous studies have suggested that flow may be associated with a non-reciprocal coactivation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems and, on a cortical level, with a state of hypofrontality and implicit processing. Here, we test these hypotheses, using the computer game TETRIS as model task. The participants (n = 77) played TETRIS under three conditions that differed in difficulty (Easy < Optimal < Difficult). Cardiac and respiratory activities, and the average oxygenation changes of the prefrontal cortex were measured continuously with functional near infrared spectroscopy (INIRS) during performance. The Optimal condition was characterized by the highest levels of state flow, positive affect, and effortless attention. The associations between self-reported psychological flow and physiological measures were investigated using a series of repeated measures linear mixed model analyses. The results showed that higher flow was associated with larger respiratory depth and lower LF. The higher respiratory depth during high flow is indicative of a more relaxed state with an increased parasympathetic activity, and thus provides partial support for the main hypotheses. There was no association between frontal cortical oxygenation and flow, even at liberal thresholds; i.e. we found no support that flow is related to a state of hypofrontality.

Social memory, including the ability to recognize faces and voices, is essential for social relationships. It has a large heritable component, but the knowledge about the contributing genes is sparse. The genetic variation underlying inter-individual differences in social memory was investigated in an exploratory sample (n = 55), genotyped with a chip comprising approximately 200,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and in a validation sample (n = 582), where 30 SNPs were targeted. In the exploratory study face identity recognition was measured. The validation study also measured vocal sound recognition, as well as recognition of faces and vocal sounds combined (multimodal condition). In the exploratory study, the 30 SNPs that were associated with face recognition at puncorrected < 0.001 and located in genes, were chosen for further study. In the validation study two of these SNPs showed significant associations with recognition of faces, vocal sounds, and multimodal stimuli: rs1800779 in the gene encoding nitric oxide synthase 3 (NOS3) and rs3807370 in the gene encoding the voltage-gated channel, subfamily H, member 2 (KCNH2), in strong linkage disequilibrium with each other. The uncommon alleles were associated with superior performance, and the effects were present for men only (p < 0.0002). The exploratory study also showed a weaker but significant association with (non-emotional) word recognition, an effect that was independent of the effect on face recognition. This study demonstrates evidence for an association between NOS3 and KCNH2SNPs and social memory.

Objectives: Insufficient sleep has been associated with impaired recognition of facial emotions. However, previous studies have found inconsistent results, potentially stemming from the type of static picture task used. We therefore examined whether insufficient sleep was associated with decreased emotion recognition ability in two separate studies using a dynamic multimodal task.

Methods: Study 1 used a cross-sectional design consisting of 291 participants with questionnaire measures assessing sleep duration and self-reported sleep quality for the previous night. Study 2 used an experimental design involving 181 participants where individuals were quasi-randomized into either a sleep-deprivation (N = 90) or a sleep-control (N = 91) condition. All participants from both studies were tested on the same forced-choice multimodal test of emotion recognition to assess the accuracy of emotion categorization.

Results: Sleep duration, self-reported sleep quality (study 1), and sleep deprivation (study 2) did not predict overall emotion recognition accuracy or speed. Similarly, the responses to each of the twelve emotions tested showed no evidence of impaired recognition ability, apart from one positive association suggesting that greater self-reported sleep quality could predict more accurate recognition of disgust (study 1).

Conclusions: The studies presented here involve considerably larger samples than previous studies and the results support the null hypotheses. Therefore, we suggest that the ability to accurately categorize the emotions of others is not associated with short-term sleep duration or sleep quality and is resilient to acute periods of insufficient sleep.

Previous studies have highlighted a deficit in facial emotion recognition after sleep loss. However, while some studies suggest an overall deficit in ability, others have only found effects in individual emotions, or no effect at all. The aim of this study was to investigate this relationship in a large sample and to utilise a dynamic test of emotion recognition in multiple modalities. 145 individuals (91 female, ages 18–45) participated in a sleep-deprivation experiment. Participants were randomised into: one night of total sleep deprivation (TSD) or normal sleep (8–9 h in bed). The following day participants completed a computerised emotional recognition test, consisting of 72 visual, audio, and audio-visual clips, representing 12 different emotions. The stimuli were divided into “easy” and “hard” depending on the intensity of emotional display. A mixed ANOVA revealed significant main effects of modality and difficulty, P < 0.001, but no main effect of condition, P = 0.31, on emotional recognition accuracy. Additionally, there was no interaction between condition and difficulty, P = 0.96, or modality, P = 0.67. This study indicates that sleep deprivation does not reduce the ability to recognise emotions. Given that some studies have only found effects on single emotions, it is possible that the effects of sleep loss are more specific than investigated here. However, it is also possible that previous findings relate to the types of static stimuli used. The ability to recognise emotions is key to social perception; this study suggests that this ability is resilient to one night of sleep deprivation.

Aging is associated with increased difficulty in facial emotion identification, possibly due to age-related network change. The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) facilitates emotion identification, but this is understudied in aging. To determine the effects of OT on dynamic facial emotion identification across adulthood, 46 young and 48 older participants self-administered intranasal OT or a placebo in a randomized, double-blind procedure. Older participants were slower and less accurate in identifying emotions. Although there was no behavioral treatment effect, partial least squares analysis supported treatment effects on brain patterns during emotion identification that varied by age and emotion. For young participants, OT altered the processing of sadness and happiness, whereas for older participants, OT only affected the processing of sadness (15.3% covariance, p = 0.004). Furthermore, seed partial least squares analysis showed that older participants in the OT group recruited a large-scale amygdalar network that was positively correlated for anger, fear, and happiness, whereas older participants in the placebo group recruited a smaller, negatively correlated network (7% covariance, p = 0.002). Advancing the literature, these findings show that OT alters brain activity and amygdalar connectivity by age and emotion.

The ability to correctly understand the emotional expression of another person is essential for social relationships and appears to be a partly inherited trait. The neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin have been shown to influence this ability as well as face processing in humans. Here, recognition of the emotional content of faces and voices, separately and combined, was investigated in 492 subjects, genotyped for 25 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in eight genes encoding proteins important for oxytocin and vasopressin neurotransmission. The SNP rs4778599 in the gene encoding aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator 2 (ARNT2), a transcription factor that participates in the development of hypothalamic oxytocin and vasopressin neurons, showed an association that survived correction for multiple testing with emotion recognition of audio–visual stimuli in women (n = 309). This study demonstrates evidence for an association that further expands previous findings of oxytocin and vasopressin involvement in emotion recognition.

Emotional facial expressions are important cues for interaction between people. The aim of the present study was to investigate brain function when processing fearful facial expressions in offenders with two psychiatric disorders which include impaired emotional facial perception; autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and psychopathy (PSY). Fourteen offenders undergoing forensic psychiatric assessment (7 with ASD, and 7 psychopathic offenders) and 12 healthy controls (HC) viewed fearful and neutral faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Brain activity (fearful versus neutral faces) was compared both between HC and offenders and between the two offender groups (PSY and ASD). Functional co-activation was also investigated. The offenders had increased activity bilaterally in amygdala and medial cingulate cortex as well as the left hippocampus during processing fearful facial expressions compared to HC. The two subgroups of offenders differed in five regions compared with each other. Results from functional co-activation analysis suggested a strong correlation between the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in the left hemisphere only in the PSY group. These findings suggest enhanced neural processing of fearful faces in the amygdala as well as in other facial processing brain areas in offenders compared to HC. Moreover, the co-activation between amygdala and ACC in the PSY but not the ASD group suggested qualitative differences in amygdala activity in the two groups. Since the sample size is small the study should be regarded as a pilot study.