Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience最新文献

Observing and understanding faces is a critical component of social interactions. The neural correlates of face processing have been well established to be preferentially lateralised to the right hemisphere, though the functional role of this brain asymmetry has received less attention. Here we investigated the hypothesis that a left-visual-field (right-hemisphere) bias in face perception would be associated with a broader set of self-reported social competencies. Participants (n = 348) completed a chimeric face task, requiring judgements of which side of chimeric face stimuli were more emotional, a face emotion recognition task, and the Multidimensional Social Competence Scale in an online experiment. Overall social competencies were predicted by degree of chimeric face task bias to the right hemisphere (determined as the laterality quotient, LQ). Structural Equation Model analyses revealed that social inferencing and non-verbal sending skills were best predicted by LQ. In all analyses the predictive role of LQ was independent of face emotion recognition. Social cognition has previously been linked to the right hemisphere, but we report a novel relationship between lateralisation of face processing, and aspects of social competencies that encompass both understanding and the display of social cues.

We investigated the impact of negative emotion on hippocampal-dependent associative memory through the "weather prediction task," which distinguishes between hippocampal (declarative) and striatal (procedural) memory systems. This was achieved by comparing the "paired-associates" condition, where participants memorise associations between cues and outcomes, with the "feedback" condition, where they learn these associations through trial-and-error. Based on the dual representation theory, we hypothesized that negative emotion would selectively impair hippocampal-dependent memory but instead found substantial evidence for a null effect of emotion. Across three experiments, the third of which employed a sequential design with Bayesian statistics and a sample of 800 participants, negative emotion did not decrease associative memory accuracy in the hippocampal-dependent "paired-associates" condition. These results challenge the dual representation theory, at least in the context of nontraumatic, controlled laboratory conditions.

The ability to adjust brain resources to manage expected uncertainty is hypothesized to be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), although the evidence remains limited. To investigate this, we studied 29 neurotypical (NT) and 29 high-functioning adults with ASD performing a probabilistic two-alternative value-based task while undergoing magnetoencephalography (MEG) and pupillometry. The task comprised five sequential blocks with stable reward probabilities (70%:30%), but varying stimulus pairs and reward values, enabling assessment of behavioral and neural adaptation to expected uncertainty. We analyzed a hit rate of advantageous choices, response times, and computational measures of prior belief strength and precision. To examine cortical activation during decision-making, we used MEG source reconstruction to quantify α-β oscillation suppression in decision-relevant cortical regions within the predecision time window. Linear mixed models assessed trial-by-trial effects. Behaviorally, ASD participants exhibited lower overall belief precision but intact probabilistic rule generalization, showing gradual performance improvement and strengthening of prior beliefs across blocks. However, unlike NT individuals, they did not show progressive downscaling of neural activation during decision-making or reduction in neural response to feedback signals as performance improved. Furthermore, on a trial-by-trial basis, increased belief precision in ASD was not associated with reduced cortical activation, a pattern observed in NT individuals. These findings suggest an atypically rigid and enhanced allocation of neural resources to advantageous decisions in individuals with ASD, although they, as NT individuals, rationally judge such decisions as optimal. This pattern may reflect an aversive response to the irreducible uncertainty inherent in probabilistic decision-making.

Cognitive impulsivity has traditionally been examined by isolating single factors, such as delay, effort, or reinforcement probability. However, real-world decision-making is inherently complex, with these variables rarely acting independently. While some perspectives suggest that effort and time represent a unified construct-effort merely reflecting the time employed responding-empirical evidence suggests that they are dissociated, supported by different neuromodulation mechanisms involved in effort-based versus time-based decision making. Understanding how these variables interact is essential for elucidating the mechanisms underlying maladaptive choices in psychological disorders. This study investigated the interaction between effort and time in shaping preferences by using SHR and WKY rat strains, models for motivational-related psychopathologies. A delay-discounting task was employed, incorporating fixed-ratio schedules to manipulate effort. Each strain was divided into two groups: one had effort in the delayed option; the other had effort in the immediate option. Results showed that in both strains effort in the delayed option led to steeper discounting rates compared to effort in the immediate option, highlighting the significant role of effort in modulating impulsive behavior. No strain differences were found, which is consistent with the notion that delay and effort operate as separate cost factors influencing decision-making, mediated by specific and partially independent dopaminergic pathways. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of the neural mechanism and behavioral dynamics associated with effort and delay, offering insights into their joint influence on decision-making processes.

Loneliness is an unpleasant subjective experience associated with significant psychological and physical health problems. With increasing urbanization and aging populations, loneliness is becoming a global public health concern. Thus, understanding the neural correlates of loneliness is crucial for developing targeted intervention approaches. In the current study, we collected resting-state fMRI data from 238 young adults (ages 17-26; 59 males, 179 females) and used fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and functional connectivity (FC) analyses to investigate the neural correlates of loneliness. Results revealed that loneliness was negatively correlated with fALFF in the right posterior precuneus. Functional connectivity analyses showed that loneliness was positively correlated with connectivity between the right posterior precuneus and right superior frontal gyrus, and negatively correlated with connectivity between the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex and a network including the right cerebellum, left fusiform gyrus, and right superior occipital gyrus. These findings reveal neural correlates of loneliness, including distinct patterns of intrinsic activity in the posterior precuneus and specific functional connectivity patterns involving regions associated with social cognition and emotional regulation. The results provide neural evidence for understanding individual differences in loneliness and could potentially inform future research on neurostimulation and cognitive-behavioral interventions targeting these specific brain networks.

This study investigates the acute impact of high-intensity activity on perceptual decision-making, using computational modeling to assess changes during and after physical activity. Participants performed a two-alternative forced choice perceptual decision-making task at rest (pre- and post-exercise) and during six of eight 5-min cycling bouts (totaling 47 min) under dual-task condition, while maintaining an average intensity of 86 ± 7% of their maximum heart rate. Drift diffusion modeling was applied to accuracy and reaction time data to estimate changes in evidence accumulation (drift rate), decision threshold (boundary separation), and nondecision processes (t_er). Results revealed improved post-exercise performance, characterized by shorter nondecision time, potentially reflecting a transient improvement in motor or perceptual efficiency. During ongoing physical activity, results indicate that exercise is associated with a decrease in nondecision time and an increase in the efficiency of evidence accumulation, while response caution remains stable. These findings provide novel insights into how sustained high-intensity exercise modulates perceptual decision-making dynamics under physiological stress.

The nucleus accumbens plays a pivotal role in goal-directed behaviors, receiving inputs from prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. We investigated local field potential activity in all three areas in awake-behaving male Sprague-Dawley rats performing a high-effort lever pressing task for food reinforcement (fixed-ratio, FR40 schedule). Using a within-subject design, we administered a VMAT-2 inhibitor tetrabenazine (TBZ), a dopamine-depleting agent that suppresses the exertion of effort in instrumental behaviors and induces a low-effort bias on choice tasks. Tetrabenazine substantially reduced lever pressing compared with vehicle in rats responding on the FR40 schedule, and we observed that TBZ significantly decreased theta peak frequency and power (6-12 Hz). Theta frequency and power both decreased with higher local rates of responding, especially in dorsal hippocampus, and this relationship is moderated by TBZ, marking its modulatory effects on neural dynamics during exertion of effort. There is substantial variability between animals in both the TBZ-induced suppression of lever pressing and the relationship between theta power and local press rate. We determined that the behavioral effects of TBZ were correlated with these neurophysiological changes across animals. Taken together, these findings demonstrate how TBZ may affect both theta dynamics and effortful behavior and suggest that the amplitude and frequency of theta band may vary with exertion of effort in motivated behavior.

The active inference framework (AIF) considers the brain as a generative model guiding behavior under the imperative of minimizing the model's variational free energy. Computationally, this is accomplished by hierarchical Bayesian inference. The theory views organisms as doxastic agents, which has drawn the criticism of being insufficient to explain conative agents motivated by desire. Specifically, it has been noted that the concept of desire is not isomorphic with belief and, therefore, fits poorly with AIF. In this paper, we build on previous work that suggests a path to integrating conation in AIF and present three arguments. First, the dichotomy between belief and desire is unnecessary. To that end, we define desire as a hierarchical inference that starts from a domain-general inference on the agent's affective dynamics (affective charge) and descends to contextualized inference on the precision of action policies. We suggest that this hierarchy is implemented by a coordinated activity of the intrinsic brain networks: default mode, action mode, executive, and salient. Second, we argue for a central role that deferred action plays in the process of desire by allowing for affect-dependent awareness of the agent's states over different timescales. Third, we suggest that the proposed model of desire and deferred action has ramifications for understanding psychopathology, which we frame as the malfunction of deferred action and desire and use obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression as examples. This view entails that disorders of affect and motivation are subjectively desired despite their associated suffering.

Impaired breathing-related interoceptive abilities have been associated with adverse outcomes, including higher levels of anxiety. However, brain connectivity patterns related to poor interoception, and how these may be modulated by anxiety, are poorly understood. This exploratory study investigated connectivity profiles associated with breathing-related interoceptive abilities in 65 volunteers who underwent ultrahigh-field (7 Tesla) "resting-state" magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), as well as completed a breathing-related interoceptive task and an anxiety questionnaire. The breathing task measured four aspects of interoceptive ability (sensitivity, decision bias, metacognitive bias, and insight), which served alongside anxiety to explain amygdala connectivity in the rs-fMRI data. We observed that connectivity between bilateral amygdala and insula cortex was linked to the level of confidence ascribed to respiratory-related interoceptive judgements (metacognitive bias), while left-lateralised connectivity between amygdala and insula cortex was associated with a worsened ability to detect inspiratory resistances (interoceptive sensitivity). Both reductions in confidence and sensitivity correlated weakly with heightened anxiety levels at a behavioural level. By contrast, the connectivity differences across levels of metacognitive bias and interoceptive sensitivity were not accounted for by anxiety. Our findings could suggest that, in the general population, connectivity between amygdala and insula cortex is linked to breathing-related interoceptive processes in a manner that is largely independent of anxiety.

Sexual minority youth (SMY) experience heightened suicide risk, partly because of stigma surrounding sexual orientation identity. Neurobiological characteristics can influence reactivity to social cues (e.g., perceived liking or rejection) and suicide risk. These effects are exacerbated during adolescence-a developmental period of heightened sensitivity to social contexts. In this cross-sectional study of youth at varying psychiatric risk, we examined whether neural reactivity to social cues moderated the link between sexual minority status and suicidal ideation (SI) and whether sexual orientation victimization experiences further influenced these effects. Seventy-five youth (aged 14-22 years; 52% SMY, 48% heterosexual) reported depression, SI, and victimization, and completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging task involving viewing of unfamiliar face stimuli and receipt of social cues in rewarding and ambiguous contexts. Regions-of-interest analyses examined task-related neural reactivity in neural social regions. Moderation analyses were conducted using linear regressions. Sexual minority youth reported more severe depression, victimization, and SI (p < .05). Left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) activation to social cues, regardless of the degree of valence and certainty, moderated the link between sexual minority status and SI, where SMY (vs. non-SMY) with dampened left TPJ activity had higher SI. Exploratory analyses indicated that these associations were not further influenced by victimization. Results indicate enhanced suicide risk in SMY with altered social processing in the TPJ-a key region of neural social systems-across contexts, regardless of victimization history. Findings suggest that individual differences in neural reactivity to social cues are critical for understanding SMY suicide risk and have potentially important clinical implications.