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Temporally Unpredictable Sounds Exert a Context-Dependent Influence on Evaluation of Unrelated Images

Bach, DR; Seifritz, E; Dolan, RJ; (2015) Temporally Unpredictable Sounds Exert a Context-Dependent Influence on Evaluation of Unrelated Images. PLoS One , 10 (6) , Article e0131065. 10.1371/journal.pone.0131065. Green open access

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Abstract

Temporally unpredictable stimuli influence murine and human behaviour, as previously demonstrated for sequences of simple sounds with regular or irregular onset. It is unknown whether this influence is mediated by an evaluation of the unpredictable sound sequences themselves, or by an interaction with task context. Here, we find that humans evaluate unrelated neutral pictures as more negative when these are presented together with a temporally unpredictable sound sequence, compared to a predictable sequence. The same is observed for evaluation of neutral, angry and fearful face photographs. Control experiments suggest this effect is specific to interspersed presentation of negative and neutral visual stimuli. Unpredictable sounds presented on their own were evaluated as more activating, but not more aversive, and were preferred over predictable sounds. When presented alone, these sound sequences also did not elicit tonic autonomic arousal or negative mood change. We discuss how these findings might account for previous data on the effects of unpredictable sounds, in humans and rodents.

Type: Article
Title: Temporally Unpredictable Sounds Exert a Context-Dependent Influence on Evaluation of Unrelated Images
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131065
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131065
Language: English
Additional information: © 2015 Bach et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1472662
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