Social Neuroscience最新文献

This explorative hyperscanning EEG whole-brain study describes activation networks within and between brains representing leading and following behavior. The directed information flow was analyzed for singles and pairs of brains simultaneously activated using the graph-based algorithm of PCMCI. This algorithm was previously tested for frontal activations in singles and pairs of brains, returning significant directed statistical dependencies. The participants led and followed each other using a minimal model based on rhythmic tapping. This whole-brain study resulted in directed causal connections representing neuronal networks for the social activities studied. The brain regions exhibiting the highest number of connections were chosen for further analysis from the extensive network of connections. This resulted in four networks representing within-brain and between-brains, respectively, for leading and following. Network commonalities aligned with previous research of leading and following reflecting cognition, working memory and social cognition, visual attention, and motoric engagement. Follower networks exhibited socially adaptive activations. The between-brain networks appear to involve more brain regions, possibly reflecting the more complex situation involving another person. The PCMCI could prove to be a suitable tool for identifying whole-brain networks of directed causality that represent leading and following, both within and between brains, using hyperscanning EEG data.

Parents' empathic responses are crucial in shaping children's attitudes. Empathy triggers positive emotional responses, which facilitate adaptive moral judgment and utilitarian decisions. However, no study has examined the role of parental empathy in influencing children's moral reasoning and their underlying neural responses. In this study, we investigated the association between mothers' empathy levels and children's moral decisions and brain activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). 19 children wore a 20-channel functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) cap with a standard PFC montage while discussing preschool-aged stories with their mothers. We measured mothers' empathy levels using the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire and their preschool children's empathic tendencies by asking whether they would help the characters of these stories with simple chores in hypothetical scenarios. Findings showed that children are disposed to behave in ways parallel to their mother's attitudes. Empathic mothers have children who make prosocial decisions rooted in empathic mentalization. These helpful children also have higher activations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the brain area associated with ethical decision-making. This study highlights the impact of parent-child communication in strengthening children's moral knowledge and moral emotions and emphasizes that parents' attitudes and interactions play a significant role in children's decision-making abilities.

We systematically investigated the application of embodied hyperscanning methodologies in social neuroscience research. Hyperscanning enables the simultaneous recording of neurophysiological and physiological signals from multiple participants. We highlight the trend toward integrating Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) within the 4E research framework, which emphasizes the interconnectedness of brain, body, and environment. Our analysis revealed a geographic concentration of studies in the Global North, calling for global collaboration and transcultural research to balance the field. The predominant use of Magneto/Electroencephalogram (M/EEG) in these studies suggests a traditional brain-centric perspective in social neuroscience. Future research directions should focus on integrating diverse techniques to capture the dynamic interplay between brain and body functions in real-world contexts. Our review also finds a preference for tasks involving natural settings. Nevertheless, the analysis in hyperscanning studies is often limited to physiological signal synchrony between participants. This suggests a need for more holistic and complex approaches that combine inter-corporeal synchrony with intra-individual measures. We believe that the future of the neuroscience of relationships lies in embracing the complexity of cognition, integrating diverse methods and theories to enrich our grasp of human social behavior in its natural contexts.

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.

Obesity is linked to notable psychological risks, particularly in social interactions where individuals with high body mass index (BMI) often encounter stigmatization and difficulties in forming and maintaining social connections. Although awareness of these issues is growing, there is a lack of research on real-time, dynamic interactions involving dyads with various BMI levels. To address this gap, our study employed a joint finger-tapping task, where participant dyads engaged in coordinated activity while their brain activity was monitored using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our findings showed that both Bidirectional and Unidirectional Interaction conditions exhibited higher levels of behavioral and interbrain synchrony compared to the No Interaction condition. Notably, only in the Bidirectional Interaction condition, higher dyadic BMI was significantly correlated with poorer behavioral coordination and reduced interbrain synchrony. This finding suggests that the ability to maintain social coordination, particularly in scenarios requiring continuous mutual prediction and adjustment, is modulated by dyads' BMI.

The explosion of digital media has emerged quickly from the convergence of technological advances, pandemic urgency, and cultural changes that have now taken hold in the daily life of people around the world. With cell phone, tablet and laptop devices as well as broad internet service available to an estimated two-thirds of the world's population, the landscape of social interaction continues to change. "Social media" for personal, educational, business, health and other purposes is being used daily. With this shift, the field of social neuroscience has begun to consider both digital and in-person interactions. The hyperscanning technique lends itself well to this challenge and is beginning to be applied to study of varied social constructs as well as clinical samples. This special issue has assembled a set of papers specifically focused on hyperscanning as an informative approach to investigating digital vs. in-person interactions. Papers present conceptual, methodological, and primary data findings. Authors address issues of interpersonal stress regulation, shared and distinctive bodily and physiological characteristics of digital vs. in-person experiences, the effects of prior social interaction on emotional contagion, and the possible influence of BMI on neural synchrony during motor coordination.

Emotional contagion refers to the tendency for individuals to replicate the emotional states of others primarily, within the context of social interactions. Prior research has focused on the real-time emotional contagion during interpersonal communication. However, this study proposes that social interaction experiences, particularly those involving cooperation, might also play a role in promoting emotional contagion. To investigate this issue, the present study divided participants into the interactive group and the control group and conducted EEG-based hyperscanning to explore the impact of interpersonal interaction experience on emotional contagion. Behavioral results indicated that individuals reported a greater psychological closeness to their partners after experiencing interaction. Additionally, the interactive group showed stronger emotional congruence between observers and senders. EEG results further demonstrated that inter-brain synchrony in the emotional contagion phase among the observer and sender of the interactive group was significantly higher than that of the control group and was significantly correlated with the observer's emotional state. This research suggests that social interaction experience may affect emotional contagion by altering the interpersonal dynamics. The present study adds to the understanding of how social interactions can shape emotional experiences and emphasizes that interpersonal experiences might be a key factor in promoting emotional contagion.

While loneliness has been associated with altered neural activity in social brain networks and reduced heart rate variability (HRV) in response to social stressors, it is still unclear whether these are related or parallel effects. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the relationship between loneliness and neural and parasympathetic responses to social stimuli by using an experimental induction of momentary loneliness. Sixty-three participants (18-35 y.o.) received manipulated feedback about their future relationships to induce either loneliness (Future Alone, FA; n = 31) or feelings of belonging (Future Belong, FB, n = 32) and completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session with concomitant HRV measurement during which affective pictures with social or nonsocial content were presented. In line with our previous research, decreased vagal flexibility and more negative affect were observed in participants subjected to the loneliness induction. Furthermore, even though no significant between-group differences in neural activity were observed, the neural response to negative social vs nonsocial stimuli in the temporoparietal junction was positively associated with the parasympathetic response, and this relationship was stronger in the FA group. Taken together, these results suggest that transient feelings of loneliness may disrupt adaptive responding to environmental demands and negatively impact brain-heart interactions.

Level 1 visuo-spatial perspective-taking (VSPT) refers to judging what other people can and cannot see. Previous research has suggested that this form of VSPT can be achieved relatively effortlessly. Level 2 VSPT, which refers to judgments about how an object appears from different viewpoints, is conceptually more complex and linked to higher-level social cognition and mentalizing. Despite growing neuroscientific evidence on VSPT, fMRI studies have not yet directly compared levels of perspective-taking. Study 1 collected fMRI data from a within-subject comparison of level 2 versus level 1 VSPT. We used a common activation contrast comparing inconsistent versus consistent perspectives between self and others. In Study 2, we further distinguished the brain regions associated with level 2 VSPT from those responsive to stimulus ambiguity and complexity. To achieve this, we asked participants to adopt different viewpoints on ambiguous and unambiguous stimuli. Results from both studies found that brain activation for level 2 VSPT was particularly high in areas of the dorsal attention network. Follow-up connectivity analysis found that level 2 VSPT is primarily carried out by the dorsal attention and the frontoparietal network. These results align with theories suggesting that VSPT can be achieved by engaging visuospatial attention and inhibitory control processes.

The present study compares the ability of non-autistic (NA) and autistic adults (ASD) with intellectual functioning in the normal range to process communicative intentions from biological motion (BM) - a capacity often considered as a prerequisite for a higher-order social cognition (SC). Twenty-nine ASD and 29 NA completed two tasks assessing the ability to recognize the communicative cues presented by either one or two point-light agents, as well as one point-light emotion recognition task and additional measures of SC abilities. Autistic participants demonstrated a decreased ability to recognize communicative intentions from BM (p = 0.02 for dyadic and p = 0.03 for single agent task) despite similar levels of neurocognitive and social cognitive functioning. Additional exploratory analyses revealed an indirect trajectory linking the capacity to recognize communication from BM with autism symptoms through social cognitive capacity. Autistic adults may experience difficulties in processing communicative intentions, even in the absence of detectable higher-order SC problems. A possible mechanism might be the engagement in compensatory strategies that are inadequate for detecting lower-order intuitive social cues. Therefore, including tasks that assess the ability to detect communicative cues from BM may be beneficial for autistic adults with high cognitive abilities, in whom SC difficulties might be overlooked.