Social Neuroscience最新文献

The neurobiology of typical moral cognition involves the interaction of frontal, limbic, and temporoparietal networks. There is still much to be understood mechanistically about how moral processing is disrupted; such understanding is key to combating antisociality. Neuroscientific models suggest a key role for attention mechanisms in atypical moral processing. We hypothesized that attention-bias toward alcohol cues in alcohol use disorder (AUD) leads to a failure to properly engage with morally relevant stimuli, reducing moral processing. We recruited patients with AUD (n = 30) and controls (n = 30). During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants viewed pairs of images consisting of a moral or neutral cue and an alcohol or neutral distractor. When viewing moral cues paired with alcohol distractors, individuals with AUD had lower medial prefrontal cortex engagement; this pattern was also seen for left amygdala in younger iAUDs. Across groups, individuals had less engagement of middle/superior temporal gyri. These findings provide initial support for AUD-related attention bias interference in sociomoral processing. If supported in future longitudinal and causal study designs, this finding carries potential societal and clinical benefits by suggesting a novel, leverageable mechanism and in providing a cognitive explanation that may help combat persistent stigma.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is understanding others' minds. Empathy is an insight into emotions and feelings of others. Persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) may experience impairment in ToM and empathy. To investigate ToM, empathy, and their relationship with neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and neuropsychiatric data. 41 pwMS and 41 HC were assessed using RMET for ToM, EQ, BICAMS, HADS. Cortical and subcortical gray matter volumes were calculated with Freesurfer from 3T MRI scans. pwMS showed lower EQ scores (44.82 ± 11.9 vs 51.29 ± 9.18, p = 0.02) and worse RMET performance (22.37 ± 4.09 vs 24,47 ± 2.93, p = 0.011). Anxiety and depression were higher in pwMS. EQ correlated with subcortical (amygdala) and cortical (anterior cingulate) volumes. RMET correlated with cortical volumes (posterior cingulate, lingual). In regression analysis, amygdala volume was the single predictor of empathy performance (p = 0.041). There were no significant correlations between social cognitive tests and general cognition. A weak negative correlation was found between EQ and the level of anxiety (r = -0.342, p = 0.038) The present study indicates that pwMS have impairment on ToM and empathy. The performance of ToM and empathy in MS is linked to the volumes of critical brain areas involved in social cognition.

Professional pride, including self-reflection and attitude toward one's own occupational group, induces individuals to behave in socially appropriate ways, and uniforms can encourage wearers to have this pride. This study was to elucidate the working pattern of professional pride by exploring neural responses when wearing uniforms and being conscious of a third-person's perspective. Twenty healthy adults who had an occupation requiring uniforms were scanned using functional MRI with a self-evaluation task consisting of 2 [uniform versus casual wear] × 2 [first-person perspective versus third-person perspective] conditions. The neural effects of clothing and perspective were analyzed and post-hoc tests were followed. The interaction effect was displayed in the bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, where uniform led to higher activity in third-person perspective than in first-person perspective, whereas casual wear led to the opposite pattern, suggesting this region may be involved in the awareness of third-person's perspective to uniform-wearing. The right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex showed functional connectivity with the right posterior superior temporal sulcus in uniform-third-person perspective compared to uniform-first-person perspective, suggesting this connection may work for processing information from third-person perspective in a uniform-wearing state. Professional pride may prioritize social information processing in third-person perspective rather than self-referential processing in first-person perspective.

Social influence plays a crucial role during the teen years, with adolescents supposedly exhibiting heightened sensitivity to their peers. In this study, we examine how social influence from different sources, particularly those with varying normative and informational significance, affect adolescents' opinion change. Furthermore, we investigated the underlying neural dynamics to determine whether these two behaviorally similar influences share their neural mechanisms. Twenty-three participants (14-17 years old) gave their opinions about facial stimuli and received feedback from either a peer group or an expert group, while brain responses were recorded using concurrent magnetoencephalography. In a second rating session, we found that participants' opinions changed in line with conflicting feedback, but only when the feedback was lower than their initial evaluation. On the neural level, conflict with peers evoked stronger neural responses than conflict with experts in the 230-400 ms time window and the right frontotemporal magnetometer channels. Nevertheless, there was no greater conformity toward peers. Moreover, conflict compared to no conflict decreased neural oscillations in the beta frequency range (20-26 Hz) at the right frontal and parietal channels. Taken together, our findings do not support the general assumption that adolescent behavior is excessively vulnerable to peer norms, although we found heightened neural sensitivity to peer feedback.

The junction between memory dysfunction and socioaffective dysfunction is a complex area as research has typically been interested in one dysfunction rather than in the other. However, this junction can be studied under the lens of destination memory. Destination memory (i.e. the ability to remember to whom a piece of information was previously transmitted) is unique in that it draws on both memory and socioaffective processes. Research has demonstrated how destination memory is prone to distortions in neurological/psychiatric disorders. This paper aims to provide a focused review on the interplay between memory and socioaffective processes in the deterioration of destination memory within these disorders. It shows how both episodic memory and socioaffective dysfunction can jointly contribute to the decline in destination memory, although the contribution of each of the two factors may vary depending on the disorder.

Sociocognitive impairment is well known in the relapsing-remitting form of multiple sclerosis (RR-MS). The purpose of the present study was to assess explicit and implicit humor abilities in this population. Based on clinical observation and contrary to the current cognitive model, we hypothesized that implicit performances (happy facial expressions) would be better than explicit ones (humor judgment assessed by explicit humor comprehension, subjective feeling of amusement as a conscious appreciation of funniness, and verbal justifications of funniness). Twenty-five RR-MS patients and twenty-five healthy participants completed the tasks. Their face was filmed during humor ratings. Patients' results suggest that 32% of them showed an impairment in explicit humor comprehension, with normal facial expressions. Both groups found great difficulty in justifying the cause of their amusement. All these results may suggest the existence of a supplementary implicit pathway in humor processing. The preservation of this implicit pathway may be advantageous for future remediation. Contrary to the current model, we found that the subjective feeling of amusement was preserved when comprehension was impaired. Further studies will be needed to clarify this component, and adjust the theoretical modeling.

Today, with the development of neuroscience and the discovery of new secrets of the brain, the social sciences, including law, have made significant progress with the help of new findings in this science. One of the significant applications of neuroscience in modern criminal law is the explanation of the neurological dimensions of human free will, which in addition to creating a profound and scientific approach to the definition of this important element of criminal responsibility, can help ascertain the loss of free will causes. To this end, the present study is an attempt to answer this question in the context of the Iranian criminal justice system: What are the core causes of the loss of free will from the perspective of neurolaw? The paper strives to take an appropriate step toward the development of criminal justice. In this study, we found that mental disorders, coercion, drunkenness, somnambulism, and error are the core causes that can be assessed in particular ways using EEG and fMRI techniques, however, each with limitations.

Environmental factors, such as culture, are known to shape individual variation in brain activity including spontaneous activity, but less is known about their population-level effects. Eastern and Western cultures differ strongly in their cultural norms about relationships between individuals. For example, the collectivism, interdependence and tightness of Eastern cultures relative to the individualism, independence and looseness of Western cultures, promote interpersonal connectedness and coordination. Do such cultural contexts therefore influence the group-level variability of their cultural members' spontaneous brain activity? Using novel methods adapted from studies of inter-subject neural synchrony, we compare the group-level variability of resting state EEG dynamics in Chinese and Canadian samples. We observe that Chinese subjects show significantly higher inter-subject correlation and lower inter-subject distance in their EEG power spectra than Canadian subjects, as well as lower variability in theta power and alpha peak frequency. We demonstrate, for the first time, different relationships among subjects' resting state brain dynamics in Chinese and Canadian samples. These results point to more idiosyncratic neural dynamics among Canadian participants, compared with more shared neural features in Chinese participants.

The integration of vision and touch is proposed as a critical factor for processing one's own body and the bodies of others in the brain. We hypothesize that tactile stimulation on an individual's face may change the ability to process the faces of other, but not the processing of other visual images. We aimed to determine if facial touch increased the activity of the mirror system and face recognition memory of the observer. Therefore, mu suppression was measured to compare the effect of facial touch in performing two visual tasks. The participants observed faces and non-face visual images under two sets of conditions. In the first condition, a robotic finger touched the participant's cheek while in the second condition, no touch occurred. Upon each observational task, the participants were given in a recognition test. Behavioral results indicated that facial touch improved recognition performance for faces, but not for non-face visual images. Tactile stimulation increased mu suppression in both occipital and central electrodes during face processing; however, the suppression did not significantly change during non-face visual processing. Our findings support the concept that the brain uses a self-body representation, as a reference to understand the mental states or behaviors of others.

Public facilities that have NIMBY (not in my backyard) structure involve both a social dilemma, in which individuals' decisions to prevent the worst outcomes for themselves undermine the public interest, and a moral dilemma focused on the majority versus the minority. This study examined the cognitive-neural processes in judging whether to prioritize the site residents or the citizenry as a whole within the context of NIMBY. Our ROIs were the right angular gyrus being related to concern about the worst possible outcomes for others and oneself, the amygdala associating with emotional aversion to prioritizing the majority, and the vmPFC, which integrates the aversion into "all things considered" judgments. As a result of comparing ingroup conditions for which a NIMBY facility may make participants worst-off position and outgroup conditions for which this possibility is denied, the right angular gyrus was activated in both conditions. The amygdala was activated only in the ingroup, and the vmPFC exhibited a stronger tendency in the ingroup. We concluded that the cognitive-neural processes in judgments on NIMBY facilities are common to both decision-making to avoid the worst-off position for others and for oneself and moral judgments between the majority and the minority.