Social Neuroscience最新文献

Empathy requires the ability to understand another's point of view and is critical for motivating a person to help others. However, little is known about the link between experiences of empathic emotional engagement in close friendships during adolescence and neural correlates of empathy in adulthood. Beginning in 1998, N = 88 participants drawn from a demographically diverse community sample were observed annually from ages 13 to 21 and rated on the amount of emotional engagement displayed toward a close friend during a support task. At approximately age 24, participants underwent functional brain imaging while a partner or stranger was under distress. Contrary to predictions, greater emotional engagement with close friends during adolescence corresponded prospectively with reduced temporal pole activity (a region associated with cognitive empathy and perspective taking) while observing threats directed at others. Results have implications for understanding the neurodevelopmental roots of empathy.

Being touched by others (social-touch) and touching oneself (self-touch) are common nonverbal behaviors in everyday interaction. The commonalities and differences between these two types of touching behavior are of particular interest for conditions when social-touch is substantially restricted such as during the corona pandemic. Neuropsychologically, pleasant social-touch is associated with increased activation in frontal brain regions such as frontopolar, dorsolateral prefrontal (dlPFC), and orbitofrontal cortices (OFC). However, for these regions a deactivation has also been reported. Likewise, for self-touch the findings are controversial. Therefore, the aim of this study is to shed light on the controversial findings and to elucidate the relation between self-touch and social-touch. From 2021 to 2022, in a quasi-naturalistic setting, in forty-six participants brain oxygenation and deoxygenation was examined during social-touch and self-touch in frontal cortices applying functional NearInfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Social-touch compared to self-touch led to a significantly higher brain deoxygenation in the frontopolar areas and in parts of the dlPFC and OFC. In contrast, brain oxygenation in the PFC was significantly increased during self-touch compared to social-touch. The cerebral activation and deactivation pattern in a quasi-naturalistic setting indicates that self-touch cannot achieve the hedonic effects of social-touch, but it can influence internally self-regulating processes.

We investigated neural correlates of Emotion Recognition Accuracy (ERA) using the Assessment of Contextualized Emotions (ACE). ACE infuses context by presenting emotion expressions in a naturalistic group setting and distinguishes between accurately perceiving intended emotions (signal), and bias due to perceiving additional, secondary emotions (noise). This social perception process is argued to induce perspective taking in addition to pattern matching in ERA. Thirty participants were presented with an fMRI-compatible adaptation of the ACE consisting of blocks of neutral and emotional faces in single and group-embedded settings. Participants rated the central character's expressions categorically or using scalar scales in consequent fMRI scans. Distinct brain activations were associated with the perception of emotional vs. neutral faces in the four conditions. Moreover, accuracy and bias scores from the original ACE task performed on another day were associated with brain activation during the scalar (vs. categorical) condition for emotional (vs. neutral) faces embedded in group. These findings suggest distinct cognitive mechanisms linked to each type of emotional rating and highlight the importance of considering cognitive bias in the assessment of social emotion perception.

It is well established that the Self has a unique representation in the social brain, as evident from the Self-Referential Effect (SRE). However, the timing and neural mechanisms underlying the representation of individuals with varying degrees of closeness and emotional relevance to the Self remain unclear. Twenty-two participants read 260 personality traits and decided whether they described themselves, a close friend, or an admired celebrity. A strong Self-Referential Effect (SRE) was found at behavioral, ERP, and neuroimaging levels. Three anterior ERP components were identified as sensitive to social information: a P200 (250-350 ms) responding to famous others' traits, a P600 (500-700 ms) responding to self-trait processing, and a late positivity (800-950 ms) responding to self-trait processing and close traits. Source reconstructions revealed partially overlapping but distinct neural sources for each individual. The right precuneus (bodily self) and inferior frontal areas (inner voice) were active only during self-processing, while the right medial prefrontal cortex (BA10) was consistently active across tasks, showing a robust SRE. These findings provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the representation of the Self in social contexts.

The current study explored associations between testosterone, cortisol, and both the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRPS) and the Inventory of Callous Unemotional (ICU) traits. Data were gathered from a relatively large sample of university students (n = 522) and analyses considered direct and interactive associations between hormones and psychopathic traits, as well as interactions between these associations and the time of day at which samples were gathered and the sex of participants. Baseline cortisol had a negative association with LSRPS primary psychopathy scores. In addition, baseline cortisol interacted with the time of day in association with LSRPS total scores. Simple slopes analyses indicated cortisol had a negative association with LSRPS total scores in the morning but not the afternoon. Interactions among hormone measures were not statistically significant. There was also no evidence for the moderation of associations between hormones and psychopathic traits by sex.

Social neuroscientists often use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to understand the relationship between social experiences and their neural substrates. Although MRI is a powerful method, it has several limitations in the study of social experiences, first and foremost its low ecological validity. To address this limitation, researchers have conducted multimethod studies combining MRI with Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). However, there are no existing recommendations for best practices for conducting and reporting such studies. To address the absence of standards in the field, we conducted a systematic review of papers that combined the methods. A systematic search of peer-reviewed papers resulted in a pool of 11,558 articles. Inclusion criteria were studies in which participants completed (a) Structural or functional MRI and (b) an EMA protocol that included self-report. Seventy-one papers met inclusion criteria. The following review compares these studies based on several key parameters (e.g., sample size) with the aim of determining feasibility and current standards for design and reporting in the field. The review concludes with recommendations for future research. A special focus is given to the ways in which the two methods were combined analytically and suggestions for novel computational methods that could further advance the field of social neuroscience.

As individuals increasingly engage in social interactions through digital mediums, understanding the neuroscientific underpinnings of such exchanges becomes a critical challenge and a valuable opportunity. In line with a second-person neuroscience approach, understanding the forms of interpersonal syntonisation that occur during digital interactions is pivotal for grasping the mechanisms underlying successful collaboration in virtual spaces. The hyperscanning paradigm, involving the simultaneous monitoring of the brains and bodies of multiple interacting individuals, seems to be a powerful tool for unravelling the neural correlates of interpersonal syntonisation in social exchanges. We posit that such approach can now open new windows on interacting brains' responses even to digitally-conveyed social cues, offering insights into how social information is processed in the absence of traditional face-to-face settings. Yet, such paradigm shift raises challenging methodological questions, which should be answered properly to conduct significant and informative hyperscanning investigations. Here, we provide an introduction to core methodological issues dedicated to novices approaching the design of hyperscanning investigations of remote exchanges in natural settings, focusing on the selection of neuroscientific devices, synchronization of data streams, and data analysis approaches. Finally, a methodological checklist for devising robust hyperscanning studies on digital interactions is presented.