Chromium uptake by Fenugreek

Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum- graecum) is both herb (leaves) and a spice (seed) belonging to the family Fabaceae. Fenugreek leaves and seeds are used in the cuisine of India. Fenugreek also has medicinal value. Fenugreek seeds are known to reduce serum glucose and improve glucose tolerance and hence are prescribed to diabetic patients. In the recent past supplemental Chromium is being prescribed to diabetic patients to activate (increased- insulin binding, insulin receptor number, insulin receptor phosphorylation) insulin. Plants can uptake substantial quantities of toxic metals from contaminated soils if these soils are well ameliorated. 

It is then probable that the medicinal efficacy of Fenugreek in the case of diabetes could be enhanced if it takes up chromium from the soil. Preliminary studies are being conducted to note the chromium uptake by Fenugreek from soils which are applied with potassium dichromate

Studies on the Accumulation of Chromium in Fenugreek

Studying Cr uptake by Fenugreek, we note that the maximum concentration of Cr takes place in the shells of the pods followed by leaves, stems and seeds in that order. Interestingly, applied higher doses of Cr does not increase accumulation of Cr in the stems, rather Cr content in the stems levels off. However, the maximum dispersal/distribution of Cr taken up is in the leaves

The role of prediction and attention in phantom voice perception

This PhD research aimed at understanding why some people hear voices when no one is talking to them, and is rooted in theories that attempt to explain voice hearing as (i) the inability to predict the sensory consequence of self-generated speech that may lead to voice-hearing, (ii) the emotional quality of voices that may distinguish clinical from non-clinical voice-hearing, and (ii) a continuum hypothesis, which postulates that we all lie on a spectrum from low to high hallucination proneness (HP). Participants' emotional and non-emotional voices were recorded and played back to them while their brain activity was measured. Changes in specific neurophysiological markers (e.g., the N100 suppression effect) were linked to increased proneness to experience hallucinations that showed as changes in sensory feedback processing and the control of attention allocation. These findings support the idea that hallucination proneness varies among individuals, existing on a spectrum from high to low

Emotional salience but not valence impacts anterior cingulate cortex conflict processing

Stimuli that evoke emotions are salient, draw attentional resources, and facilitate situationally appropriate behavior in complex or conflicting environments. However, negative and positive emotions may motivate different response strategies. For example, a threatening stimulus might evoke avoidant behavior, whereas a positive stimulus may prompt approaching behavior. Therefore, emotional stimuli might either elicit differential behavioral responses when a conflict arises or simply mark salience. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate valence-specific emotion effects on attentional control in conflict processing by employing an adapted flanker task with neutral, negative, and positive stimuli. Slower responses were observed for incongruent than congruent trials. Neural activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was associated with conflict processing regardless of emotional stimulus quality. These findings confirm that both negative and positive emotional stimuli mark salience in both low (congruent) and high (incongruent) conflict scenarios. Regardless of the conflict level, emotional stimuli deployed greater attentional resources in goal directed behavior

Influence of emotion and sex on categorisation of voices

Emotion recognition is an important part of everyday human interaction. Previous research has shown that emotion recognition is modulated by context and other cues. For example, when asked to judge the emotional expression of a face, we are influenced by the person’s biological sex, and vice versa. In general, greater anger is perceived in male faces, and greater happiness or sadness is perceived in female faces (Becker, Kenrick,Neuberg, Blackwell, & Smith, 2007; Harris, Hayes-Skelton, & Ciaramitaro, 2016; Hess, Adams, Grammer,& Kleck, 2009). The bidirectionality of these influences is seldom assessed in the same experiment, and therefore the size of the effect of emotion on sex, and of sex on emotion, is not clear. Moreover, little is known about whether the same emotion by sex interaction also applies to judgments about human voices. This project aims to investigate if ratings of a voice’s emotion are influenced by the voice’s sexual features, and the other way around, i.e. if ratings of how male vs. female the voice sounds are influenced by the emotional tone of the voice. In addition, by using a stimulus set that through morphing varies along both the emotional and the sexual dimension, and by measuring explicit ratings of only one dimension in each condition, we will investigate the relative contribution of vocal emotion and sex cues at both the explicit and the implicit level. The stimulus set comprises 121 short sound tracks. Each sound track includes a human voice pronouncing the vowel “A” for a duration of 500 ms. To create the stimulus set, 1) a male voice with an angry tone was morphed in 11 steps into a male voice with a happy/pleasure tone; 2) a female voice with an angry tone was morphed in 11 steps into a female voice with a happy/pleasure tone; and 3) at each of the thus created 11 emotion levels the male voice was morphed into the female voice in 11 steps. Therefore, the full set includes 11 emotion levels gradually and linearly changing from angry to happy/pleasure X 11 sex levels gradually and linearly changing from male to female

Interaction of emotion and cognitive control along the psychosis continuum:A critical review

To better understand how emotion impacts cognitive control is important as both influence adaptive behavior in complex real-life situations. Performance changes in emotion and cognitive control as well as in their interaction are often described in psychotic patients as well as in non-clinical participants who experience psychosis-like symptoms. These changes are linked to low motivation and limited social interaction. However, it is unclear whether these changes are driven by emotion, cognitive control, or an interaction of both. This review provides an overview of neuroimaging evidence on the potential interaction of emotion and cognitive control along the psychosis continuum. The literature confirms that over-sensitivity towards negative and lowered sensitivity towards positive emotional stimuli in tasks exploring emotion-cognitive control interaction are associated with the severity of positive and negative symptoms in psychosis. Changes in the dynamic interplay between emotion and context-sensitive cognitive control, mediated by arousal, motivation, and reward processing may underlie poor interpersonal communication and real-life skills in psychosis. In addition, structural and functional changes in subcortical and cortical associative brain regions (e.g., thalamus, basal ganglia, and angular gyrus) may contribute to alterations in emotion and cognitive control interaction along the psychosis continuum. There is limited evidence on how antipsychotic medication and age at illness-onset affect this interaction

Emotional salience but not valence impacts anterior cingulate cortex conflict processing

Stimuli that evoke emotions are salient, draw attentional resources, and facilitate situationally appropriate behavior in complex or conflicting environments. However, negative and positive emotions may motivate different response strategies. For example, a threatening stimulus might evoke avoidant behavior, whereas a positive stimulus may prompt approaching behavior. Therefore, emotional stimuli might either elicit differential behavioral responses when a conflict arises or simply mark salience. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate valence-specific emotion effects on attentional control in conflict processing by employing an adapted flanker task with neutral, negative, and positive stimuli. Slower responses were observed for incongruent than congruent trials. Neural activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was associated with conflict processing regardless of emotional stimulus quality. These findings confirm that both negative and positive emotional stimuli mark salience in both low (congruent) and high (incongruent) conflict scenarios. Regardless of the conflict level, emotional stimuli deployed greater attentional resources in goal directed behavior

Sensory Feedback in Parkinson Disease Voice Production:A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND: Understanding voice and speech impairments in Parkinson's disease (PD) is essential for developing effective interventions and ensuring efficient social communication. OBJECTIVE: This review reports findings on voice perception and production in PD with a specific focus on sensory feedback (auditory and somatosensory) of the self-voice, neural correlates of the voice, and voice quality parameters such as pitch, loudness, and emotion modulation. METHODS: A combined bibliometric analysis and a systematic review should identify key trends and knowledge gaps in the neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)/EEG) literature on PD self-voice processing. RESULTS: EEG studies focusing on pitch revealed significant differences in the P200 event-related potential, but no differences in the N100, between healthy controls and individuals with PD. fMRI studies showed reduced activation in the motor cortex and basal ganglia during speech production in PD, accompanied by increased activation in other brain regions, such as the auditory cortex, which was associated with pitch variability and loudness control. A decrease in right dorsal premotor cortex activation was linked to impaired voice control, particularly regarding loudness modulation. Additionally, the review identified missing research on the emotion modulation of the voice, despite its critical role in social communication. Altered sensory feedback plays a significant role in compensatory cortical responses during vocalization, underscoring the importance of sensory feedback in maintaining normal voice production in PD. CONCLUSIONS: This review identified missing research on voice loudness perception and the potential impact of emotion perception deficits regarding voice modulation in persons with PD

M53. EMOTIONAL SELF-VOICE PROCESSING AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH HALLUCINATORY PRONENESS

Abstract Background Sensory brain areas typically reduce their activity when we speak, allowing us to differentiate our own from someone else’s speech. Similarly, the amplitude of the N100 component of the EEG event-related potential in response to own speech is smaller than for passive listening to own or someone else’s speech. This amplitude suppression effect seems to be altered in voice hearers, which in turn could result in source misattribution (e.g., self-produced voice attributed to an external source). Emotion in speech can have a comparable effect, altering not only self-voice processing but also differentiation of the quality of auditory hallucinations in clinical and non-clinical voice hearers. For example, unlike in non-clinical voice hearers, auditory hallucinations in clinical voice hearers are usually derogatory in content and negatively affect daily functioning. Recent research strongly suggests that clinical and non-clinical voice hearers lie on a continuum ranging from low to high hallucinatory proneness. Based on this notion, the present study used EEG to investigate the effects of manipulations of self-voice quality in self-generated and passively listened-to self-voice as a function of hallucinatory proneness (HP) in healthy young adults. This is the first EEG study that examined the interplay of sensory suppression, emotion, and HP in a non-clinical population. Methods Participants varying in HP (according to the Launay Slade Hallucination Scale) participated in a standardized button-press task to elicit their own voice (compared to passively listening to it) in which the self-voice changed stepwise from fully neutral to fully emotional. The experimental task comprised three conditions: motor-to-auditory (MA), where the button-press generated the voice, auditory only (AO), where the voice was presented without the button press, and motor only (MO-a control condition to remove the motor related artifacts from the MA condition), where the button press did not generate the voice. Neutral and angry self-voice (single syllable ‘ah’ and ‘oh’ vocalizations of 500 ms duration) were recorded for each participant before the EEG acquisition. These voices were morphed to generate a neutral to angry continuum consisting of five stimuli ranging from fully neutral to fully angry: 100% neutral, 60-40% neutral-angry, 50-50% neutral-angry and 40–60% neutral-angry and 100% angry. Results Preliminary results with 17 participants show a significant effect of emotional self-voice quality on N1 suppression effect, with a larger suppression effect for the 100% angry as compared to 100% neutral self-voice. On the other hand, 60-40% neutral-angry, 50-50% neutral-angry and 40–60% neutral-angry self-voice show an enhancement effect. Furthermore, the results show a significant interaction of HP and voice quality on N1 suppression effect such that high HP showed no N1 suppression effect for the 100% neutral self-voice and an enhanced N1 effect when emotional quality of the self-voice increased. Discussion These data suggest that participants perceive the manipulations in the self-voice quality such that they recognize their own fully neutral and angry voice depicted by N100 suppression effect. Similarly, an N100 enhancement effect for 50-50% neutral-angry voice suggest that it is perceived as the most uncertain or peculiar of all the stimuli. Further, low and high HP show difference in N100 suppression effect for different voices, suggesting that HP may alter self-voice processing and these alterations are enhanced for emotional self-voice. This further supports the fact that abnormal perceptual experiences in voice hearers are higher when auditory hallucinations are emotional in nature. </jats:sec