Social Neuroscience最新文献

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.

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric condition marked by social impairments. Given that social cognitive functioning strongly predicts life outcomes in schizophrenia, understanding its neurobiological basis is crucial. This study used receptor autoradiography to measure vasopressin 1a (AVPR1a) and oxytocin receptor (OXTR) densities in postmortem brain tissue from individuals with schizophrenia (N = 23) and matched controls (N = 18). We focused on the superior temporal sulcus, a region involved in social perception and often impaired in schizophrenia. AVPR1a binding densities exceeded those of OXTR. Notably, AVPR1a densities increased with age in females with schizophrenia, which may explain age-related changes in positive symptom severity (e.g. paranoia) in this group. Additionally, schizophrenia was associated with increased OXTR and a trend toward higher AVPR1a densities in the hypothalamus, a region central to oxytocin and vasopressin synthesis and stress response regulation. These findings suggest compensatory upregulation of nonapeptide receptor systems due to potentially reduced oxytocin and vasopressin release. Overall, our results highlight age- and sex-dependent alterations in receptor binding, providing insights into the neurobiology of social dysfunction in schizophrenia.

The effects of previous social experiences on social behavior have been demonstrated across species both in cooperative and competitive contexts. In dominance-subordinate hierarchies, differences across social ranks have been observed in many different mechanisms. Dominance hierarchies interfere in defensive behavior, where subordinate animals present a greater defensive behavior, regarding potential threats ("anxiety-like behavior"), than dominant animals. The serotonergic system plays a key role in regulating and mediating threat responses, including 5-HT2 receptors in the types of proximal threat responses modulated by the stress of social defeat. We separated 148 adult zebrafish in pairs and allowed them to interact for five days; after that, the dominant-subordinate rank was determined, and animals were treated with a 5-HT_2C receptor agonist (MK-212) or antagonist (RS-102221) before being observed in the novel tank test. While MK-212 increased bottom-dwelling, erratic swimming, and freezing across all statuses, RS-102221 decreased these variables in dominants but increased them in subordinates. Moreover, the effects of MK-212 were larger in subordinates than in controls or dominants, suggesting a sensitization of the 5-HT_2C receptor.

To develop pharmaceutical drugs, people experiment on lab-animals. While this practice disturbs the general population, various factors in laboratory settings may contribute to enabling experiments that harm animals. Using an ultra-realistic protocol mimicking animal research and collecting behavioral and physiological data, we invited laypersons from the general population to administrate a toxic drug on a (fake) laboratory animal. This preregistered study (n = 145) aimed to examine individual determinants and contextual frameworks that may influence willingness to engage in such experimentation. Because low self-regulatory abilities are associated with less discomfort seeing others suffer, and that objectification of lab-animals allows disengagement from them, we also examined whether they both would predict involvement in an animal-research. We also examined whether some personality markers known to predict human-animal relations (i.e. social dominance orientation, speciesist attitudes, and empathic dispositions) could be related to the willingness to experiment on a lab animal. Overall, the results of this research were mixed, as neither self-regulation abilities, animal objectification, social dominance orientation, nor empathy significantly predicted participation in animal testing. However, low speciesist attitudes significantly reduced the willingness to kill animals for science.

Partisanship has been associated with various cognitive biases. These findings are primarily based on self-reports and task performance and less on measures of neural activity. We reviewed the literature on in-group vs. out-group bias that employs face-viewing paradigms and ERP methodology to investigate unconscious bias in politics. We subsequently preregistered hypotheses about the extent to which partisanship is associated with early neural processing of political leaders' faces. Our lab experiment was conducted in the Netherlands (N = 51), a multi-party democracy, and sufficiently powered to pick up modest effect sizes for in-party vs. out-party comparisons. As expected, we find that politicians' faces elicit a stronger N170 ERP response than strangers' faces, but we did not find the same pattern for the N250 component. Contrary to our hypotheses, we did not find statistically significant differences in the P200 and N200 components for the in-party vs. out-party comparison. These findings, supported by our cluster-based permutation analysis, indicate that seeing faces of political leaders enhances attention during facial processing, regardless of party affiliation, possibly due to their frequent and affectively salient presence in media. Since in-party vs. out-party differences did not emerge early on, implications for partisanship are discussed relative to racial and minimal group bias findings.

Objective: Epilepsy is one of the chronic neurological diseases with high stigmatization due to the psychosocial problems caused by seizures. The study was conducted to examine the quality of life and stigma in people with epilepsy (PWE).

Method: The data of the descriptive and cross-sectional study were collected using the Personal Information Form, the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31), and the Stigma Scale for Epilepsy (SSE) and analyzed using the SPSS program.

Results: The study included 86 patients receiving outpatient treatment at the neurology outpatient clinic of a university hospital. The mean score of epilepsy patients in QOLIE-31 was 61.95 ± 22.68, while their mean score in the SSE was 74.67 ± 5.94. It was determined that gender, seizure type, antiepileptic drug regimen, and seizure time affected the quality of life in PWE, while educational status and seizure type affected stigma. It was determined that there was a significant relationship between the level of stigma and quality of life in epilepsy patients, and that their quality of life decreased as the level of stigma increased.

Conclusion: As a result, epilepsy negatively affects the quality of life of patients and causes stigma. Reducing stigma is effective in increasing the quality of life.

Despite increasing interest in the neural underpinnings of prosociality during childhood and adolescence, there is little convergence across studies of brain activations associated with prosocial behavior in developmental populations. Here, we build on 11 neuroimaging studies on prosocial behavior in developmental samples of average age between 8 and 17 years and conducted an Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis. We found clusters of significant spatial convergence across studies in the insulae, inferior frontal gyrus, middle cingulum, and the precentral gyrus. The cluster in the cingulate cortex, which existing literature associates with cognitive control, shows overlap with previous meta-analytical data on prosocial behavior in adults. This region may constitute a core neurocognitive mechanism underlying prosociality from childhood to adulthood.

Empathy plays a crucial role in determining how one understands others' emotional experiences and behavioral decisions. This study aimed to explore whether empathic concern affects the processing of self-related and charity-related outcome evaluations. In this study, participants performed gambling tasks for themselves and low- and high-empathy charities. The behavioral results showed that low-empathy charities had a significantly higher risk rate than the self, whereas there was no significant difference between low-and high-empathy charities. The event-related potential (ERP) results showed that the P300 valence difference (d-P300) of the self was significantly higher for high-empathy charitable activities than for low-empathy charitable activities, and the d-P300 of high-empathy charitable activities was significantly higher than that of low-empathy charitable activities. The P300 valence differences primarily originated from activation difference in the posterior mid-cingulate cortex (pMCC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The time-frequency analysis showed that positive outcomes induced greater β2 event-related desynchronization (ERD) amplitudes for high-empathy charitable activities compared to negative outcomes. These findings suggest that empathic concern increased the distinction between good and bad outcomes for charities and promoted greater cognitive effort allocation toward prosocial rewards. The d-P300 is closely linked to activations in the pMCC and mPFC.

The change in the educational model derived from the COVID-19 pandemic might have an impact on cognitive development, particularly on Executive Functions (EFs). The aim of this study was to explore cognitive performance in adolescents at two time points (12 and 14 years of age), before and after the pandemic restrictions. We also analyzed possible sex differences in the results. We evaluated EFs using the Neuropsychological Battery of Executive Functions and Frontal Lobes (BANFE-2), which includes four cognitive indices corresponding to specific cognitive functions and associated prefrontal areas: Orbitofrontal Cortex (OC index -OCI-), Anterior Prefrontal Cortex (APCI), Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DCI), and Prefrontal cortex as an index of global EFs (EFI). The ANOVA conducted to compare the evaluations before and after the pandemic revealed no significant pre-post-pandemic differences in any sex and in any BANFE-2 index, except for the OCI, in which post-pandemic performance was impaired in boys (pre and post mean score = 96.61 vs. 66.53), but not in girls (pre and post mean score = 93.55 vs. 95.0). Our findings are thus compatible with the idea of a different vulnerability to change in the educational model between sexes, and they also reveal which specific EFs may have been affected during the pandemic.

Social power is linked to approach and withdrawal motivational systems, with frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) in the electroencephalogram (EEG) potentially reflecting these tendencies. Higher left-frontal activity suggests approach, while lower levels indicate withdrawal. In this study, we used a novel within-subject design to explore how social power affects FAA. Twenty-five participants completed an episodic recall task inducing high or low social power, or a neutral condition, in random order. EEG alpha power (8-12 hz) was measured to calculate FAA indices for frontal and parietal-occipital regions and compared to resting-state asymmetry. Results showed a significant increase in left-hemispheric activity during high social power recall, affecting both frontal and non-frontal regions, compared to low power and control conditions. Low social power was associated with the least left hemispheric activity. These findings highlight strong effects of social power on brain systems related to approach and avoidance but challenge the notion that FAA is confined to frontal regions. The study enhances understanding of the neural mechanisms behind social power and underscores the value of within-subject designs and baseline measurements in studying neural activity related alpha asymmetry and social power.