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Journal ArticleDOI

Hyper-arousal decreases human visual thresholds.

08 Apr 2013-PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science)-Vol. 8, Iss: 4, pp 1
TL;DR: Results provide the first evidence that hyper-arousal from sensory stimulation can lower visual thresholds, which has important implications for survival, sports, and everyday life.
Abstract: Arousal has long been known to influence behavior and serves as an underlying component of cognition and consciousness. However, the consequences of hyper-arousal for visual perception remain unclear. The present study evaluates the impact of hyper-arousal on two aspects of visual sensitivity: visual stereoacuity and contrast thresholds. Sixty-eight participants participated in two experiments. Thirty-four participants were randomly divided into two groups in each experiment: Arousal Stimulation or Sham Control. The Arousal Stimulation group underwent a 50-second cold pressor stimulation (immersing the foot in 0–2° C water), a technique known to increase arousal. In contrast, the Sham Control group immersed their foot in room temperature water. Stereoacuity thresholds (Experiment 1) and contrast thresholds (Experiment 2) were measured before and after stimulation. The Arousal Stimulation groups demonstrated significantly lower stereoacuity and contrast thresholds following cold pressor stimulation, whereas the Sham Control groups showed no difference in thresholds. These results provide the first evidence that hyper-arousal from sensory stimulation can lower visual thresholds. Hyper-arousal's ability to decrease visual thresholds has important implications for survival, sports, and everyday life.

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Proceedings ArticleDOI
12 Jul 2015
TL;DR: It is revealed that optimal arousal level influenced by tension and physiological alertness cannot be evaluated by one index, and it is led that further investigation using task difficulties in a wide range is needed.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to reveal indices which reflect the relationship among optimal arousal level, performance and positive mood during a working task. The arousal level based on both of performance and positive mood is evaluated. As a working task, working memory tasks of two difficulties are performed. Performance and psychophysiological states before, during and after the task are measured using task scores, biological signals, and subjective scores. The data of each index is analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis. It is shown that indices such as skin conductance, RR interval of electrocardiogram, and alpha power in the occipital area reflect arousal level which has relationships with performance or positive mood. On the other hand, more appropriate arousal level for positive mood is different between tension and physiological alertness. Thus, it is revealed that optimal arousal level influenced by tension and physiological alertness cannot be evaluated by one index. However, the prediction accuracy of each linear regression model is low. Therefore, it is led that further investigation using task difficulties in a wide range is needed.

2 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the conditioning paradigm to manipulate the affective significance of Gabor patches and found that negative emotion could be elicited by the alarm sound in the participants.
Abstract: Increasing evidence has indicated that emotional information, and particularly threatening visual input, elicits faster behavioral responses than non-threatening stimuli. This superior processing of threatening information is also found under conditions where consciousness is absent. However, recent studies have found that faster unconscious detection of emotion-associated stimuli than neutral stimuli may be due to their unmatched physical characteristics, rather than by their emotional content. Thus, it is necessary to test whether emotional stimuli still have the processing advantage over neutral ones in unconscious conditions when low-level visual properties are matched. In order to investigate whether the unconsciously prioritized processing still occurred with emotion-associated stimuli which are physically identical, we used the conditioning paradigm to manipulate the affective significance of Gabor patches. Participants performed two challenging visual detection tasks under the breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (b-CFS) paradigm. In Experiment 1, differently oriented Gabor patches (45° and 135°) were used as materials. uring an initial learning phase, one oriented Gabor patch (e.g., 45°) was paired with an alarm sound (CS+), whereas the other was never paired with the alarm sound (CS−). The emotional rating indicated that negative emotion could be elicited by the alarm sound in the participants. The orientation of CS+ Gabor patches was counterbalanced across the participants. In the subsequent testing phase, the participants were required to discriminate the location of the Gabor patch relative to the central fixation as quickly and accurately as possible. In this phase, Gabor patches were suppressed by dynamic noise using b-CFS. The procedure in Experiment 2 was the same with that in Experiment 1, except that the color of the Gabor patches was also varied, between red and green. In Experiment 1, there was no difference in the accuracy between CS+ stimuli and CS− stimuli (99% vs. 99%). The suppression time results showed that the CS+ stimuli emerged from suppression faster than the CS− ones. In Experiment 2, there was no difference in the accuracy for different learning conditions. For the analysis of suppression time, the “learning effect” was computed to represent difference between experimental conditions and control condition. The integrated learning showed a significant learning effect, while there was no remarkable learning effect in orientation learning or in color learning condition. These findings revealed an unconscious processing advantage for aversive conditioned stimuli. Furthermore, the learning effect was specific to the conditioned stimuli and could not generalize to other similar objects. Taken together, this study provided further evidence for the optimized processing of affectively significant visual stimuli in unconscious conditions.

1 citations


Cites background from "Hyper-arousal decreases human visua..."

  • ...Woods et al. (2013) found that the participants with higher arousal level were visually more sensitive....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article , a cardiac drift-diffusion model (cDDM) was developed to embed contemporaneous heart rate dynamics into the temporal decision model, which revealed the existence of temporal wrinkles-dilation or contraction of short intervals-in synchrony with cardiac dynamics.
Abstract: The role of the heart in the experience of time has been long theorized but empirical evidence is scarce. Here, we examined the interaction between fine-grained cardiac dynamics and the momentary experience of subsecond intervals. Participants performed a temporal bisection task for brief tones (80-188 ms) synchronized with the heart. We developed a cardiac Drift-Diffusion Model (cDDM) that embedded contemporaneous heart rate dynamics into the temporal decision model. Results revealed the existence of temporal wrinkles-dilation or contraction of short intervals-in synchrony with cardiac dynamics. A lower prestimulus heart rate was associated with an initial bias in encoding the millisecond-level stimulus duration as longer, consistent with facilitation of sensory intake. Concurrently, a higher prestimulus heart rate aided more consistent and faster temporal judgments through more efficient evidence accumulation. Additionally, a higher speed of poststimulus cardiac deceleration, a bodily marker of attention, was associated with a greater accumulation of sensory temporal evidence in the cDDM. These findings suggest a unique role of cardiac dynamics in the momentary experience of time. Our cDDM framework opens a new methodological avenue for investigating the role of the heart in time perception and perceptual judgment.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Psychophysics Toolbox is a software package that supports visual psychophysics and its routines provide an interface between a high-level interpreted language and the video display hardware.
Abstract: The Psychophysics Toolbox is a software package that supports visual psychophysics. Its routines provide an interface between a high-level interpreted language (MATLAB on the Macintosh) and the video display hardware. A set of example programs is included with the Toolbox distribution.

16,594 citations


"Hyper-arousal decreases human visua..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...[41–43] On each trial, the experimenter entered the accuracy of a participant’s response and the program calculated the optimal size of the next depth interval to be presented....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The VideoToolbox is a free collection of two hundred C subroutines for Macintosh computers that calibrates and controls the computer-display interface to create accurately specified visual stimuli.
Abstract: The VideoToolbox is a free collection of two hundred C subroutines for Macintosh computers that calibrates and controls the computer-display interface to create accurately specified visual stimuli. High-level platform-independent languages like MATLAB are best for creating the numbers that describe the desired images. Low-level, computer-specific VideoToolbox routines control the hardware that transforms those numbers into a movie. Transcending the particular computer and language, we discuss the nature of the computer-display interface, and how to calibrate and control it.

10,084 citations


"Hyper-arousal decreases human visua..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...[41–43] On each trial, the experimenter entered the accuracy of a participant’s response and the program calculated the optimal size of the next depth interval to be presented....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In connection with a study of various aspects of the modifiability of behavior in the dancing mouse a need for definite knowledge concerning the relation of strength of stimulus to rate of learning arose, the experiments which are now to be described arose.
Abstract: In connection with a study of various aspects of the modifiability of behavior in the dancing mouse a need for definite knowledge concerning the relation of strength of stimulus to rate of learning arose. It was for the purpose of obtaining this knowledge that we planned and executed the experiments which are now to be described. Our work was greatly facilitated by the advice and assistance of Doctor E. G. MARTIN, Professor G. W. PIERCE, and Professor A. E. KENNELLY, and we desire to express here both our indebtedness and our thanks for their generous services.

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"Hyper-arousal decreases human visua..." refers background in this paper

  • ...[3,5] Normal arousal, or normo-arousal, is the average level of arousal in an awake, nonbrain damaged organism and serves as the baseline state of responsiveness for conscious behavior....

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  • ...[5] However, past work suggests that 50 sec of CPS stimulation does not produce the kind of extreme hyper-arousal associated with performance decrements, but rather an arousal regulation response....

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  • ...[5,12] In particular, the present study investigates whether inducing a state of hyperarousal through sensory stimulation improves the discriminability of 1) depth relationships signaled by binocular disparity and 2)...

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Book
01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: Part 1: Normal Sleep and Its Variations; Part 2: Abnormal Sleep.
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TL;DR: An adaptive psychometric procedure that places each trial at the current most probable Bayesian estimate of threshold is described, taking advantage of the common finding that the human psychometric function is invariant in form when expressed as a function of log intensity.
Abstract: An adaptive psychometric procedure that places each trial at the current most probable Bayesian estimate of threshold is described. The procedure takes advantage of the common finding that the human psychometric function is invariant in form when expressed as a function of log intensity. The procedure is simple, fast, and efficient, and may be easily implemented on any computer.

2,334 citations