Social cognitive and affective neuroscience最新文献

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take measures to reduce the influence of non-evidentiary factors, jurors may still incorporate biases into their decisions. One common bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a prosecutor's case depends on the severity of the crime. Moral judgment, affect and social cognition have been proposed as core processes underlying this and other biases. Behavioral evidence alone has been insufficient to distinguish these explanations. To identify the mechanism underlying crime-type bias, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns of brain activation from mock jurors reading criminal scenarios. Brain patterns from crime-type bias were most similar to those associated with social cognition (mentalizing and racial bias) but not affect or moral judgment. Our results support a central role for social cognition in juror decisions and suggest that crime-type bias and cultural bias may arise from similar mechanisms.

The present study investigated the effect of childhood trauma (CT) on amygdala and hippocampus functional connectivity (FC) and the association with clinical presentations of major depressive disorder (MDD). Participants included 73 MDD patients (42 with moderate-to-severe CT and 31 with no or low CT) and 64 healthy controls (HC; 30 with moderate-to-severe CT and 34 with no or low CT). Seed-based whole-brain resting-state FC analyses were performed with seeds located in amygdala and hippocampus. Individuals with moderate-to-severe CT, irrespective of MDD diagnosis, had decreased right amygdala-right precuneus connectivity compared to those with no or low CT. Right amygdala-right precuneus connectivity was significantly correlated with physical and social trait anhedonia in MDD. Mediation effects of this FC on relationship between CT (specifically neglect but not abuse) and trait anhedonia in MDD were significant. MDD patients demonstrated increased right amygdala-left middle frontal gyrus FC, decreased right amygdala-right medial superior frontal gyrus (mSFG) FC and decreased right hippocampus-bilateral mSFG FC relative to HC. Findings highlight the effect of CT on right amygdala-right precuneus FC irrespective of MDD diagnosis. FC of right amygdala-right precuneus may be involved in the mechanism linking CT and depression through its association with trait anhedonia.

This longitudinal behavioral neuroimaging study tested two hypotheses concerning self-concept development in adolescence: domain-specific self-concept and similarity between own (direct) and perceived peers' (reflected) opinions of the self. Participants (N = 189; 10-24 years) evaluated their traits in academic, physical appearance and prosocial domains from direct and reflected perspectives in an functional magnetic resonance imaging session across three time points (TP1: n = 160; TP2: n = 151; TP3: n = 144). Behaviorally, we observed a mid-adolescent dip in self-concept positivity, which was strongest for the academic domain, showing domain differentiation in mid-adolescence. Self-evaluations were associated with activity in, e.g. medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporal-parietal junction (TPJ). mPFC showed an adolescent-emerging peak in activation, pronounced more for direct than reflected self-evaluations. TPJ activation was generally stronger for reflected self-evaluations, and activation linearly increased with age for both reflected and direct self-evaluations. Longitudinal prediction analyses showed that positivity of self-evaluations predicted increases in self-concept clarity and less fear of negative evaluation 1 and 2 years later, highlighting the developmental benefits of acquiring a positive self-concept. Together, we show that adolescent self-development is characterized by dissociable neural patterns underlying self-evaluations in different domains, and from reflected and direct perspectives, confirming adolescence as a formative phase for developing a coherent and positive self-concept.

Recent work on the cognitive regulation of dietary decision-making suggests that regulation can alter both the choices that people make in the moment and longer-lasting preferences. However, it is unclear what mechanisms lead to temporary or lingering changes. To address this question, we used fMRI during a task employing the cognitive regulation of food choice and assessed changes in food preference from baseline to post-regulation. We found evidence that regulation may result in a temporary reconfiguration of the neural drivers of choice, de-emphasizing goal-inconsistent value-related computations in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and resulting in more goal-consistent changes in value-related computations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Moreover, we find that the extent to which the dlPFC was recruited to represent different regulatory goals during the moment of choice negatively predicted the extent to which those regulatory goals produced lingering changes in preference. Our results suggest that the recruitment of the dlPFC in the service of regulation may have a downside: it is effective at changing behavior in the moment, but its effects on preferences are transient.

Mental imagery is involved in both the expression and treatment of fear-related disorders such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the neural correlates associated with the acquisition and generalization of differential fear conditioning to imagined conditioned stimuli are relatively unknown. In this study, healthy human participants (n = 27) acquired differential fear conditioning to imagined conditioned stimuli paired with a physical unconditioned stimulus (i.e. mild shock), as measured via self-reported fear, the skin conductance response and significant right anterior insula (aIn) activation. Multivoxel pattern analysis cross-classification also demonstrated that the pattern of activity in the right aIn during imagery acquisition was quantifiably similar to the pattern produced by standard visual acquisition. Additionally, mental imagery was associated with significant differential fear generalization. Fear conditioning acquired to imagined stimuli generalized to viewing those same stimuli as measured with self-reported fear and right aIn activity, and likewise fear conditioning to visual stimuli was associated with significant generalized differential self-reported fear and right aIn activity when imagining those stimuli. Together, the study provides a novel understanding of the neural mechanisms associated with the acquisition of differential fear conditioning to imagined stimuli and that of the relationship between imagery and emotion more generally.

Morphological features of the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in late childhood and early adolescence may provide important clues as to the developmental etiology of clinical conditions such as obesity. Body composition measurements and structural brain imaging were performed on 11 226 youth at baseline (age 9 or 10 years) and follow-up (age 11 or 12 years). Baseline morphological features of the lateral PFC were examined as predictors of body composition. Findings revealed reliable associations between middle frontal gyrus volume, thickness and surface area and multiple indices of body composition. These findings were consistent across both time points and remained significant after covariate adjustment. Cortical thicknesses of the inferior frontal gyrus and lateral orbitofrontal cortex were also reliable predictors. Morphology effects on body composition were mediated by performance on a non-verbal reasoning task. Modest but reliable moderation effects were observed with respect to environmental self-regulatory demand after controlling for sex, race/ethnicity, income and methodological variables. Overall findings suggest that PFC morphology is a reliable predictor of body composition in early adolescence, as mediated through select cognitive functions and partially moderated by environmental characteristics.

Food-specific go/no-go training might reduce overeating and facilitate weight loss. In this pilot study, we examined whether a food-specific go/no-go training over five weeks, as compared to a non-food-specific training, could produce changes in behavioral and neural responses to food images and body weight. Here, we used a sample of 51 overweight participants divided into training and control groups whose brain activity and food evaluation were measured before and after the training. Compared with the control group, in the training group we found significant reductions in high-calorie food evaluation. We also found lower activations in inhibitory control- and reward-related brain regions in response to high-calorie food images. Further, activation change of the mid-insula in response to the high-calorie food images was positively associated with change in the evaluation of those images. However, we found no evidence for a significant effect of food-specific go/no-go training on body weight change. Our findings highlight that food-specific go/no-go training in overweight individuals can reduce high-calorie food evaluation, but also neural activations in inhibitory control- and reward- related brain regions.

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) are both important nodes for self-control and decision-making but through separable processes (cognitive control vs evaluative processing). This study aimed to examine the effects of excitatory brain stimulation [intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS)] targeting the dlPFC and dmPFC on eating behavior. iTBS was hypothesized to decrease consumption of appetitive snack foods, via enhanced interference control for dlPFC stimulation and reduced delay discounting (DD) for dmPFC stimulation. Using a single-blinded, between-subjects design, participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (i) iTBS targeting the left dlPFC, (ii) iTBS targeting bilateral dmPFC or (iii) sham. Participants then completed two cognitive tasks (DD and Flanker), followed by a bogus taste test. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging revealed that increases in the medial prefrontal cortex activity were evident in the dmPFC stimulation group during the DD task; likewise, a neural efficiency effect was observed in the dlPFC stimulation group during the Flanker. Gender significantly moderated during the taste test, with females in the dmPFC showing paradoxical increases in food consumption compared to sham. Findings suggest that amplification of evaluative processing may facilitate eating indulgence when preponderant social cues are permissive and food is appetitive.

Early adolescence is a critical period for eating behaviors as children gain autonomy around food choice and peer influences increase in potency. From a neurodevelopmental perspective, significant structural changes take place in the prefrontal cortex during this time, including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which is involved in socially contextualized decision-making. We examined the morphological features of the OFC in relation to food choice in a sample of 10 309 early adolescent children from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. Structural parameters of the OFC and insula were examined for relationships with two important aspects of food choice: limiting the consumption of fast/fried food and maximizing the consumption of nutritious foods. Raw, partially adjusted and fully adjusted models were evaluated. Findings revealed that a larger surface area of the lateral OFC was associated with higher odds of limiting fast/fried food consumption in raw [odds ratio (OR) = 1.07, confidence interval (CI): 1.02, 1.12, P = 0.002, PFDR = 0.012], partially adjusted (OR = 1.11, CI: 1.03, 1.19, P = 0.004, PFDR = 0.024) and fully adjusted models (OR = 1.11, CI: 1.03, 1.19, P = 0.006, PFDR = 0.036). In contrast, a larger insula volume was associated with lower odds of maximizing healthy foods in raw (OR = 0.94, CI: 0.91, 0.97, P <0.001, PFDR = 0.003) and partially adjusted (OR = 0.93, CI: 0.88, 0.98, P = 0.008, PFDR = 0.048) models. These findings refine our understanding of the OFC as a network node implicated in socially mediated eating behaviors.