Browsing by Author "Villena González, Mario"

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    Attending to the heart is associated with posterior alpha band increase and a reduction in sensitivity to concurrent visual stimuli
    (Society for Psychophysiological Research, 2017) Villena González, Mario; Moenne Vargas, Cristóbal Matías; Lagos, Rodrigo A.; Alliende Correa, Luz María; Billeke, Pablo; Aboitiz, Francisco; López Hernández, Vladimir; Cosmelli, Diego
    Attentional mechanisms have been studied mostly in specific sensory domains, such as auditory, visuospatial, or tactile modalities. In contrast, attention to internal interoceptive visceral targets has only recently begun to be studied, despite its potential importance in emotion, empathy, and self-awareness. Here, we studied the effects of shifting attention to the heart using a cue-target detection paradigm during continuous EEG recordings. Subjects were instructed to count either a series of visual stimuli (visual condition) or their own heartbeats (heart condition). Visual checkerboard stimuli were used as attentional probes throughout the task. Consistent with previous findings, attention modulated the amplitude of the heartbeat-evoked potentials. Directing attention to the heart significantly reduced the visual P1/N1 amplitude evoked by the attentional probe. ERPs locked to the attention-directing cue revealed a novel frontal positivity around 300 ms postcue. Finally, spectral power in the alpha band over parieto-occipital regions was higher while attending to the heart-when compared to the visual task-and correlated with subject's performance in the interoceptive task. These results are consistent with a shared, resource-based attentional mechanism whereby allocating attention to bodily signals can affect early responses to visual stimuli.
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    Autonomous sensory meridian response is associated with a larger heartbeat‐evoked potential amplitude without differences in interoceptive awareness
    (2023) Villena González, Mario; Rojas-Thomas, Felipe; Morales-Torres, Ricardo; López Hernández, Vladimir
    Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) describes the experience of a pleasant body sensation accompanied by a feeling of well-being and relaxation in response to specific audiovisual stimuli, such as whispers and personal attention. Previous work suggests a relationship between this experience with the processing of affective and body states; however, no research has explored differences in interoception between people experiencing ASMR and those who do not. We hypothesized that the ASMR experience is based on interoception processing. To test this, we assessed group differences across different dimensions of interoception: Interoceptive sensibility (IS), measured using the multidimensional assessment of interoceptive awareness (MAIA); Interoceptive accuracy score (IAS), measured by calculating performance in a heartbeat counting task (HCT), and the electrophysiological index of interoception, the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP), which was calculated during the HCT and an ASMR tingle reporting task (ASMR-TRT). Our results showed that IS and IAS, dimensions requiring conscious awareness, showed no differences between groups. However, HEP amplitude was larger in the ASMR group in both tasks. We concluded that the ASMR experience is based on an unconscious interoceptive mechanism, reflected by HEP, where exteroceptive social-affective stimuli are integrated to represent a body state of positive affective feelings and relaxation, as has been described for affective touch. The relevance of this finding relies on that interoceptive function, body regulation, and emotional/affective experiences are fundamental for well-being, and the relationship between ASMR and interoception opens the way to future research exploring the causal relationship between them and their potential clinical applications.
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    Beta Oscillations Distinguish Between Two Forms of Mental Imagery While Gamma and Theta Activity Reflects Auditory Attention
    (2018) Villena González, Mario; Palacios García, Ismael José; Rodríguez B., Eugenio; López Hernández, Vladimir
    Visual sensory processing of external events decreases when attention is internally oriented toward self-generated thoughts and also differences in attenuation have been shown depending on the thought’s modality (visual or auditory thought). The present study aims to assess whether such modulations occurs also in auditory modality. In order to investigate auditory sensory modulations, we compared a passive listening condition with two conditions in which attention was internally oriented as a part of a task; a visual imagery condition and an inner speech condition. EEG signal was recorded from 20 participants while they were exposed to auditory probes during these three conditions. ERP results showed no differences in N1 auditory response comparing the three conditions reflecting maintenance of evoked electrophysiological reactivity for auditory modality. Nonetheless, time-frequency analyses showed that gamma and theta power in frontal regions was higher for passive listening than for internal attentional conditions. Specifically, the reduced amplitude in early gamma and theta band during both inward attention conditions may reflect reduced conscious attention of the current auditory stimulation. Finally, different pattern of beta band activity was observed only during visual imagery which can reflect cross-modal integration between visual and auditory modalities and it can distinguish this form of mental imagery from the inner speech. Taken together, these results showed that attentional suppression mechanisms in auditory modality are different from visual modality during mental imagery processes. Our results about oscillatory activity also confirm the important role of gamma oscillations in auditory processing and the differential neural dynamics underlying the visual and auditory/verbal imagery.
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    Beta Oscillations Distinguish Between Two Forms of Mental Imagery While Gamma and Theta Activity Reflects Auditory Attention
    (2018) Villena González, Mario; Palacios García, Ismael José; Rodriguez, Eugenio; Lopez, Vladimir
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    Chapter 5 - Imagination and mind wandering: two sides of the same coin? A brain dynamics perspective
    (2020) Villena González, Mario; Cosmelli, Diego; D. Preiss, David; Cosmelli, Diego; Kaufman, James C.
    The renewed interest in mind wandering has produced a wealth of knowledge about brain mechanisms underlying the generation of spontaneous thoughts and stimulus-independent cognition. However, how this phenomenon relates to the more classically defined imagination, with which it shares several key phenomenological and psychological features, remains largely unexplored. Here, we discuss whether and how imagination relates to mind wandering and whether they depend on similar brain mechanisms. We pay particular attention to the spontaneous/deliberate contrast in both these phenomena and the importance of considering thought contents, modality, temporality, and emotional valence when studying stimulus-independent cognition. We draw from recent advances in brain connectivity studies to analyze the role that the brain's default mode network (DMN) might have in articulating these two pervasive aspects of human mental life. It appears that such an integrative process is likely to depend on a highly dynamical DMN, one that cannot be reduced simply to a resting state or self-related network. Ultimately, this challenges the idea that mind wandering and imagination are substantially different processes and suggests that it might be worth looking at them as part of the same type of self-generated mental activity.
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    Creativity and the Wandering Mind: Spontaneous and Controlled Cognition
    (Academic Press, 2020) Barnett, Paul Joseph; Kaufman, James C.; Barr, Nathaniel; Beaty, Roger; Seli, Paul; Zedelius, Claire M.; Schooler, Jonathan W.; Palmiero, Massimiliano; Villena González, Mario; Cosmelli, Diego; Prochazkova, Luisa; Hommel, Bernhard; Jay Lynn, Steven; Polizzi, Craig; Miskovic, Vladimir; Aksen, Damla; Woolley, Jacqueline D.; Bunce, Louise; Boerger, Elizabeth A.; Whitebread, David; O’Sullivan, Lisha; Russ, Sandra W.; Beghetto, Ronald A.; Schuh, Kathy L.; Dobson, Charles; Christoff, Kalina; Preiss, David D.; Colm Hogan, Patrick; Preiss Contreras, David Daniel; Cosmelli, Diego; Kaufman, James C.
    Creativity and the Wandering Mind: Spontaneous and Controlled Cognition summarizes research on the impact of mind wandering and cognitive control on creativity, including imagination, fantasy and play. Most coverage in this area has either focused on the negative consequences of mind wandering on focused problem solving or the positive effect of mindfulness, but not on the positive consequences of mind wandering. This volume bridges that gap. Research indicates that most people experience mind wandering during a large percentage of their waking time, and that it is a baseline default mode of brain function during the awake but resting state. This volume explores the different kinds of mind wandering and its positive impact on imagination, play, problem-solving, and creative production.
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    Data of ERPs and spectral alpha power when attention is engaged on visual or verbal/auditory imagery
    (2016) Villena González, Mario; López Hernández, Vladimir; Rodríguez B., Eugenio
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    Emotional text messages afect the early processing of emoticons depending on their emotional congruence: evidence from the N170 and EPN event related potentials
    (2024) Aldunate Ruff Nerea Patricia; López Hernández, Vladimir; Rojas Thomas, Felipe Eduardo; Villena González, Mario; Palacios García, Ismael José; Artigas, Claudio A.; Rodríguez B., Eugenio; Bosman, Conrado A.
    Emoticons have been considered pragmatic cues that enhance emotional expressivity during computer-mediated communication. Yet, it is unclear how emoticons are processed in ambiguous text-based communication due to incongruences between the emoticon's emotional valence and its context. In this study, we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of contextual infuence on the early emotional processing of emoticons, during an emotional congruence judgment task. Participants were instructed to judge the congruence between a text message expressing an emotional situation (positive or negative), and a subsequent emoticon expressing positive or negative emotions. We analyzed early event-related potentials elicited by emoticons related to face processing (N170) and emotional salience in visual perception processing (Early Posterior Negativity, EPN). Our results show that accuracy and Reaction Times depend on the interaction between the emotional valence of the context and the emoticon. Negative emoticons elicited a larger N170, suggesting that the emotional information of the emoticon is integrated at the early stages of the perceptual process. During emoticon processing, a valence efect was observed with enhanced EPN amplitudes in occipital areas for emoticons representing negative valences. Moreover, we observed a congruence efect in parieto-temporal sites within the same time-window, with larger amplitudes for the congruent condition. We conclude that, similar to face processing, emoticons are processed diferently according to their emotional content and the context in which they are embedded. A congruent context might enhance the emotional salience of the emoticon (and therefore, its emotional expression) during the early stages of their processing.
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    Mood Detection in Ambiguous Messages : The Interaction Between Text and Emoticons
    (2018) Aldunate, Nerea; Villena González, Mario; Rojas Thomas, F.; López Hernández, Vladimir; Bosman Vittini, Conrado Arturo
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    Orienting attention to visual or verbal/auditory imagery differentially impairs the processing of visual stimuli
    (2016) Villena González, Mario; López Hernández, Vladimir; Rodríguez B., Eugenio
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    Spontaneous Alpha Power Lateralization Predicts Detection Performance in an Un-Cued Signal Detection Task
    (2016) Boncompte, Gonzalo; Villena González, Mario; Cosmelli, Diego; López Hernández, Vladimir
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    The train of thought: How our brain responds to the environment whilst we are thinking in terms of mental images or an inner voice
    (2016) Villena González, Mario
    When our attention is internally oriented toward self-generated thoughts, brain processing to external stimuli becomes attenuated. Studies have shown that visual imagery and auditory/verbal thoughts activate brain regions involved in visual or auditory perception, respectively. However, the potential effects that different mental contents might have on attentional processing were unknown. A recent study from our laboratory showed that visual imagery decreases visual processing to external stimuli to a greater extent than auditory/verbal thoughts. These results demonstrate that different kinds of thoughts differentially affect our attentional and neural processing of external stimuli.