Browsing by Subject "synchrony"

Objectives The purpose of this thesis is to study physiological connections during emotion, and investigate whether emotional synchrony predicts cognitive performance. It is widely acknowledged emotions affect human behavior extensively, however, less is known about how different processes of emotional regulation are related. These relations can be studied by measuring emotional physiological synchrony, determined as the index value of similarities between physiological processes that are recorded while experiencing emotion. When people experience emotions, activity of bodily functions changes, and the synchrony measure is meant to reflect whether the changes vary in the same manner. Multiple different methods for determining the emotional synchrony have been suggested, yet there is no established practice. In this thesis, a new method for determining emotional physiological synchrony is presented. Also, cognitive performance is measured to understand whether synchrony has a relationship with behavioral outcomes. The research question of this thesis is: Does synchrony of emotional responses predict cognitive performance? Methods 32 subjects participated in the experiment in which three signals—electrodermal activity (EDA), electroencephalography (EEG) and facial electromyography (fEMG)—were recorded while subjects’ performed in cognitively loading and emotionally arousing tasks. Cognitive performance was measured by Visual Search and Mental Arithmetic tasks. Emotional synchrony was determined based on each subjects’ physiological activity during Mental Imagery task, in which subjects recalled their emotional memories. A new method for determining the synchrony was created, consisting of two approaches: Approach 1 for investigating the synchrony of physiological responses over time, within one emotion, and Approach 2 investigating synchrony of physiological responses between two emotions, averaged over time. Both approaches employed Kendall correlation and cosine similarity analysis. The physiological responses extracted from the signals included: skin conductance response (SCR) from EDA, frontal alpha asymmetry (FASYM) from EEG, and corrugator supercilii (CRG), zygomaticus major (ZYG) and orbicularis oculi (ORB) from fEMG. The relationship between synchrony indices and cognitive performance was explored with linear models. Results It was found that strong synchronization between facial muscles ZYG and ORB corresponded to the positiveness of emotions having greatest activation during highly arousing positive emotions: enthusiasm, joy and triumph. This synchrony was linked with increased performance in Visual Search tasks, indicating that subjects whose facial muscle activation synchronized during Mental Imagery, tended to achieve better performance scores in Visual Search.