{"title":"Investigating the Impact of Maternal Stress on Milk Glucocorticoids: A Multimethod Approach.","authors":"H Lustermans, R Beijers, C de Weerth","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70150","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70150","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Milk glucocorticoids (MGCs) in human milk may play a pivotal role in the health and development of children. Though MGCs might be increased by maternal stress, prior research yielded conflicting findings. The aim of this preregistered study is to examine the impact of maternal stress on MGCs. Mothers from the low-risk SMILEY cohort participated 6-8 weeks postpartum. During a naturalistic study, mothers (n = 110) reported their current global affective state three times a day (morning n = 96, afternoon n = 98, evening n = 97) and simultaneously collected milk samples (morning n = 89, afternoon n = 93, evening n = 88). During an experimental study in the lab, mothers (n = 80) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test or a control task and collected a milk sample 15 min thereafter. Global affect reactivity was measured using visual analogue scales and cortisol reactivity with salivary sampling. Mothers reported on mental health symptoms during the last week(s) using questionnaires. Outcomes were milk cortisol and cortisone, and the cortisol-to-cortisone ratio (cc-ratio). In the naturalistic study, global affect was unrelated to MGCs and cc-ratio. In the experimental study, the stress condition significantly increased MGCs and cc-ratio, compared to the control condition. Moreover, irrespective of group, heightened salivary cortisol reactivity was associated with increased MGCs and cc-ratio, while heightened global affect reactivity was related to increased milk cortisone only in mothers with fewer mental health symptoms. These findings show a causal effect of maternal stressor exposure on MGCs, though replication studies are warranted. Links between MGCs and self-reported global affect remain unclear, requiring future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70150"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12439325/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145070477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M Teixeira de Almeida, L Quattrocchi, N Perroud, T Aboulafia-Brakha
{"title":"Circadian Variation of Salivary Oxytocin in Young Adult Women.","authors":"M Teixeira de Almeida, L Quattrocchi, N Perroud, T Aboulafia-Brakha","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70139","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70139","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article presents circadian variation in salivary oxytocin levels in a sample of 91 female participants, including 47 healthy controls and 44 patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). A significant increase in salivary oxytocin levels was observed between awakening and early afternoon. There were no significant group differences and no Group × Time interaction. These findings have implications for research conducted in the field and suggest the need to control for time of assessment, as done in studies assessing cortisol.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70139"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12402539/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144966493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marco Sala, Francesco Vespignani, Simone Gastaldon, Laura Casalino, Francesca Peressotti
{"title":"In the Words of Others: ERP Evidence of Speaker-Specific Phonological Prediction.","authors":"Marco Sala, Francesco Vespignani, Simone Gastaldon, Laura Casalino, Francesca Peressotti","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70135","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70135","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Prediction models usually assume that highly constraining contexts allow the pre-activation of phonological information. However, the evidence for phonological prediction is mixed and controversial. In this study, we implement a paradigm that capitalizes on the phonological errors produced by L2 speakers to investigate whether specific phonological predictions are made based on speaker identity. L1 Italian speakers were asked to read sentence fragments, after which a final word was spoken by either an L1- or an L2-accented speaker. The spoken final word could be predictable or not, depending on the sentence context. The identity of the speaker (L1- vs. L2-accented) may or may not be cued by an image of the face of the speaker. Our main analysis indicated that cueing the speaker identity was associated with a larger N400 predictability effect, possibly reflecting an easier processing of predictable words due to phonological pre-activation. As visual inspection of the waveforms revealed a more complex pattern than initially anticipated, we used Temporal EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis) to identify and disentangle the ERP components underlying the effect observed. In the L1-accent condition, predictable words elicited a posterior positivity relative to unpredictable words, possibly reflecting a P3b response, which was more pronounced when the speaker identity was cued. In the L2-accent condition, cueing the speaker identity was associated with a smaller N1 and a larger P3a response. These results suggest that phonological prediction for L1- and L2-accented speakers likely involves different cognitive processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70135"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12402685/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144966496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martina Saltafossi, Andrea Zaccaro, Daniel S Kluger, Mauro Gianni Perrucci, Francesca Ferri, Marcello Costantini
{"title":"Respiration Facilitates Behavior During Multisensory Integration.","authors":"Martina Saltafossi, Andrea Zaccaro, Daniel S Kluger, Mauro Gianni Perrucci, Francesca Ferri, Marcello Costantini","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70145","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70145","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The brain processes information from the external environment alongside signals generated by the body. Among bodily rhythms, respiration emerges as a key modulator of sensory processing. Multisensory integration, the non-linear combination of information from multiple senses to reduce environmental uncertainty, may be influenced by respiratory dynamics. This study investigated how respiration modulates reaction times and multisensory integration in a simple detection task. Forty healthy participants were presented with unimodal (Auditory, Visual, Tactile) and bimodal (Audio-Tactile, Audio-Visual, Visuo-Tactile) stimuli while their respiratory activity was recorded. Results revealed that reaction times systematically varied with respiration, with faster responses during peak inspiration and early expiration but slower responses during the expiration-to-inspiration transition. Applying the race model inequality approach to quantify multisensory integration, we found that Audio-Tactile and Audio-Visual stimuli exhibited the highest integration during the expiration-to-inspiration phase. These findings conceivably reflect respiration phase-locked changes in cortical excitability which in turn orchestrates multisensory integration. Interestingly, participants also tended to adapt their respiratory cycles, aligning response onsets preferentially with early expiration. This suggests that, rather than a mere bottom-up mechanism, respiration is actively adjusted to maximize the signal-to-noise balance between interoceptive and exteroceptive signals.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12464358/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145150694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Right but Still Lousy: Correct Responses With an Unfavorable Outcome Elicit an Error Positivity.","authors":"Peter Löschner, Marco Steinhauser","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70151","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70151","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The error positivity (Pe) is a neural correlate of performance monitoring that is observed after errors in choice tasks. The results of previous studies suggest that the Pe reflects a monitoring process that goes beyond the mere distinction between correct and incorrect responses. Here, we investigated the idea that the Pe represents a higher-order error signal reflecting an inference-based outcome evaluation. To this end, we created a multistage task whose overall outcome depended on the correctness of each individual stage and was revealed not until the last stage. This implied that the final response could lead to an unfavorable outcome even if it was objectively correct. Our results replicated the general finding that a Pe occurs immediately after errors within each stage. Crucially, we also obtained a Pe after correct responses associated with an unfavorable outcome at the final stage. Moreover, a pattern classifier trained to decode this higher-order Pe successfully decoded the Pe for incorrect responses. These results suggest that the Pe represents an evaluative process that infers the outcome by integrating multiple error signals and taking context into account.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70151"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12449677/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145092336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Guangya Wang, Jiajing Yuan, Xiurong Hao, Xindi Shi, Zhouqian Yin, Xiaoyun Ji, Shijia Li
{"title":"Acute Stress Enhanced Healthy Young Males' Inhibitory Control of Avoidance Behavior to Negative Scenes.","authors":"Guangya Wang, Jiajing Yuan, Xiurong Hao, Xindi Shi, Zhouqian Yin, Xiaoyun Ji, Shijia Li","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70152","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70152","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Maladaptive responses to approach-avoidance conflict (AAC) are common in various stress-related disorders. Acute stress exerts complex effects on approach/avoidance motivation and inhibitory control, both of which are critical for AAC resolution and influenced by prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation. To investigate the impact of acute stress on AAC related to emotional scenes, 53 healthy male participants completed a scene approach-avoidance task (AAT) after either the Maastricht Acute Stress Test or a control procedure, with functional near-infrared spectroscopy data of the PFC collected during the AAT. Participants also rated their approach-avoidance tendencies toward the scenes posttask. The stress manipulation was successful. In the control group, the compatibility effect was observed, with significantly lower accuracy for approaching negative scenes compared to avoiding negative scenes and approaching positive scenes. However, this compatibility effect was absent in the stress group. The stress group made fewer errors than the control group when approaching negative scenes. As there were no group differences in the approach-avoidance tendency ratings, we speculated that acute stress enhances inhibitory control rather than altering motivation. Stress deactivated the PFC during approaching negative scenes, indicating a limited role of top-down processing in AAC resolution. Additionally, in the stress group, reaction times were longer for avoiding negative scenes compared to avoidances to positive ones, reflecting the poststress freeze-like response. These findings provide behavioral and neural signatures of the effects of acute stress on responses to AAC, offering potential evidence for the early identification of acute stress and stress-related disorders.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70152"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145075896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Berge Osnes, Josef J Bless, Karsten Specht, Kenneth Hugdahl, Lin Sørensen
{"title":"The Relation Between Auditory Cognitive Control and Vagally-Mediated Heart Rate Variability in and Outside the Lab: Differential Effects of Circadian Rhythm?","authors":"Berge Osnes, Josef J Bless, Karsten Specht, Kenneth Hugdahl, Lin Sørensen","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70133","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Auditory cognitive control is crucial for filtering relevant information from irrelevant distractions, a frequent challenge in noisy everyday environments. This study investigates the association between vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV) and auditory cognitive control, employing the Bergen Dichotic Listening (BDL) task. We hypothesized that higher HRV would be associated with enhanced performance in the cognitively demanding forced-left (FL) condition of the BDL, which is a validated measure of auditory cognitive control. Our sample consisted of 63 healthy individuals (N = 35 women), who performed the BDL task in a laboratory setting, with resting HRV measurements taken, followed by real-life cognitive assessments with simultaneous ambulatory HRV monitoring conducted three times across different times of the day. The results confirmed a significant positive relationship between HRV and performance in the FL condition but not in the less demanding forced-right condition (FR). Furthermore, ambulatory measurements revealed that this relationship was influenced by circadian rhythms, showing stronger positive correlations during the night and morning. These findings highlight HRV as a promising biomarker for auditory cognitive control and underscore the impact of time of day on cognitive performance. This study broadens our understanding of the autonomic nervous system's role in cognitive functions and affirms the extension of laboratory findings to daily life settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70133"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144966456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Guanglong Liu, Yongyi Liang, Wendeng Yang, Ya Zheng
{"title":"Neural Dynamics Underlying Uncertain Reward Evaluation in Individuals With Intolerance of Uncertainty.","authors":"Guanglong Liu, Yongyi Liang, Wendeng Yang, Ya Zheng","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70131","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) has long been recognized as a transdiagnostic factor for various internalizing disorders. Previous studies have examined the influence of IU on the processing of uncertain threats, but little attention has been paid to uncertain reward processing. The current event-related potential study investigated this issue by examining the effects of IU on the neural dynamics underlying reward evaluation in different uncertain scenarios. We recorded EEG activity from a high-IU group (N = 35) and a low-IU group (N = 36) when they completed three guessing tasks in which rewards were delivered with either predictable or unpredictable probability, time, or magnitude. Behaviorally, the high-IU relative to the low-IU group exhibited a general aversion to uncertainty. During the early stage of reward evaluation as indexed by the reward positivity, participants with low IU, instead of those with high IU, were sensitive to predictable versus unpredictable rewards, specifically for the time task. During the late stage as indexed by the P3, the high-IU versus low-IU group was more sensitive to predictable versus unpredictable conditions, regardless of uncertainty type. Our findings demonstrate IU-related individual variability in neural dynamics underlying uncertain feedback processing in the reward domain, supporting a valence-independent maladaptation in uncertainty processing in IU.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70131"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144966463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nathan Thomas Han, Tingting Yan, Ran Zhuang, Athanasios Vasileios Kokkinakis, Liyu Cao
{"title":"Sensory Attenuation of Auditory P2 Responses is Modulated by the Sense of Action Timing Control.","authors":"Nathan Thomas Han, Tingting Yan, Ran Zhuang, Athanasios Vasileios Kokkinakis, Liyu Cao","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70134","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70134","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sensory attenuation is a well-established phenomenon in which the neurophysiological response elicited by self-initiated stimuli is attenuated compared to identical externally generated stimuli. This phenomenon is mostly studied by comparing the N1 and P2 components of the auditory ERP. Sensory attenuation has also been linked to our sense of agency and control. In the present study, we investigated the role of action timing control in sensory attenuation. Previous studies that investigated the attenuation of the N1/P2 components instructed participants to generate self-initiated stimuli by having the participants perform a series of keypresses while EEG is recorded. ERP responses are then compared to a second condition where participants passively listen to identical sounds. Studies using this paradigm, known as the self-stimulation paradigm, have used a wide range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) for keypress timing. However, the choice of SOA is rarely explained, perhaps due to an assumption of trial independence. We found that as SOA increased, participants enacted more action timing control to maintain the specified SOA level. The degree of P2 suppression also increased as participants enacted more control. Contrary to most studies in the literature, we did not find N1 suppression but instead found N1 enhancement. The results suggest that P2 suppression may be related to action timing control while N1 enhancement may reflect factors other than motor predictions, in line with more recent interpretations of the N1 suppression effect.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70134"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12406647/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144966546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mikkel Wallentin, Line Kruse, Xinyi Yan, Paula Samide, Anja Feibel Meerwald, David Trøst Fjendbo, Johanne S K Nedergaard
{"title":"Heart Talk: Emotional Inner Speech Increases Heart Rate.","authors":"Mikkel Wallentin, Line Kruse, Xinyi Yan, Paula Samide, Anja Feibel Meerwald, David Trøst Fjendbo, Johanne S K Nedergaard","doi":"10.1111/psyp.70138","DOIUrl":"10.1111/psyp.70138","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In two preregistered experiments (exp.1: n = 44; exp.2: n = 46), we investigated whether emotional inner speech influences heart rate. Participants were asked to engage in sessions of either: self-encouraging positive inner speech, self-degrading negative inner speech, or inner counting while their heart rate was monitored. Participants were lying on a bed and asked to remain still during the inner speech trials. Experiment 1 consisted of two negative, two positive, and four counting trials. Experiment 2 had four trials of each type. Trials lasted 180 s in Experiment 1 and had a mixed duration in Experiment 2 (40-70 s) to limit predictability. Motion tracking was applied to control for body movement. Median heart rate across each inner speech session was analyzed, and a significant difference was found between emotional inner speech and inner counting across both experiments. No difference between positive and negative inner speech was observed. Post hoc analyses investigated the relationship between movement and heart rate increases and found an effect with a peak lag of approximately 14 s. Removing these effects did not change the effect that emotional inner speech had on heart rate. In line with previous literature, additional analyses showed that heart rate and respiration rate were linked. Including respiration rate as a variable in regression analyses did not alter the effect of emotion. The effect of emotional inner speech thus seems robust and demonstrates a causal effect on physiology. No correlations between heart rate effects and measures of depression and rumination were observed. We also discuss the results in relation to possible confounds, such as differences in cognitive effort and inner speech rate.</p>","PeriodicalId":20913,"journal":{"name":"Psychophysiology","volume":"62 9","pages":"e70138"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12409695/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144993348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}