Browsing by Author "Garcez, Helena"
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- Autistic traits and event-related potentials in the general population: A scoping review and meta-analysisPublication . Mazer, Prune; Garcez, Helena; Macedo, Inês; Pasion, Rita; Silveira, Celeste; Sempf, Frederieke; Ferreira-Santos, FernandoDifferences in short and long-latency Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) can help us infer abnormalities in brain processing, considering early and later stages of stimuli processing across tasks and conditions. In autism research, the adult population remains largely understudied compared to samples at early stages of development. In this context, this scoping review briefly summarises what has been described in community and subclinical adult samples of autism. The current scoping review and meta-analysis includes 50 records (N = 1652) and comprehensively explores short and long-latency ERP amplitudes and their relationship with autistic traits in adult community samples. This meta-analysis identified, with small to medium effect sizes, distinctive patterns in late ERP amplitudes, indicating enhanced responses to visual stimuli and the opposite patterns to auditory tasks in the included sample. Additionally, a pattern of higher amplitudes was also found for the component P3b in autistic traits. Differential effects in visual and auditory domains are explored in light of the predictive processing framework for Autism. It remains possible that different brain mechanisms operate to explain symptoms related with different sensory modalities. P3b is discussed as a possible component of interest in future studies as it revealed a more robust effect for differentiating severity in the expression of autistic traits in adulthood
- Cardiac interoceptive processing across psychopathy dimensions: evidence from the heartbeat tapping task and the attentional modulation of heartbeat-evoked potentialsPublication . Campos, Carlos; Sá, Catarina; Mazer, Prune; Pasion, Rita; Garcez, Helena; Paiva, Tiago O.; Braga, Patrícia Vilela; Rocha, Nuno Barbosa; Barbosa, Fernando; Rocha, Nuno; Campos, CarlosPsychopathy is a multidimensional personality structure encompassing interpersonal, affective, and behavioral traits. Interoception (ability to perceive and subjectively experience inner bodily states) may be a putative mechanism underlying the etiological pathways of psychopathy. Individual differences in interoceptive processing across psychopathy dimensions may interfere with the ability to perceive somatic sensations that signal the emotional valence of everyday events. To examine the association between psychopathy dimensions (triarchic phenotypes - boldness, meanness, and disinhibition; classical 4-facets - interpersonal, affective, impulsive, antisocial) and cardiac interoceptive processing, namely objectively measured cardiac interoceptive attention and accuracy. Fifty community-dwelling participants (25 women) were recruited and completed: (a) self-report measures indexing psychopathy, trait-based interoceptive attention and accuracy, and alexithymia; (b) modified Heartbeat Tapping Task to index cardiac interoceptive accuracy, where subjects were required to tap after each heartbeat under rest and breath hold conditions (the latter enhanced the magnitude of cardiac signals); (c) modified Heartbeat Attention Task for producing an attentional modulation of heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) - neuronal markers of cardiac interoceptive processing - where subjects were required to allocate their attention on their heart vs. an exteroceptive stimulus (objective measure of interoceptive attention). Cardiac interoception was only significantly related to boldness traits. Boldness was positively associated with cardiac interoceptive accuracy after the breath hold manipulation (non-significant after controlling for heart rate), despite no significant effects being observed at rest. Boldness was also negatively correlated with the attentional modulation of HEP due to atypical neuronal responses when allocating attentional resources to the heart. The current findings implicate cardiac interoception in the boldness phenotype, as this psychopathy dimension was associated with enhanced interoceptive-specific perceptual sensitivity and atypical neuronal responses to cardiac afferent inputs when attending to heart-related sensations. Future studies should examine how other interoceptive modalities (e.g., respiratory, gastric) are implicated in psychopathy.