Pub Date : 2025-11-27DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101617
Sarah Gonzalez-Coffin, Leaf Van Boven
Sustainability technologies are critical for addressing climate change, yet public opposition can hinder their adoption. Recent research shows that perceptions of naturalness influence public support for technology. Naturalness is a multidimensional psychological construct. Technologies are seen as natural if they involve minimal processing, align with ecological norms, and are culturally aligned. More natural technologies, like afforestation, solar energy, and plant-based foods, are viewed as safer, more beneficial, familiar, and positive garnering greater public support than less natural technologies like direct air capture, nuclear energy, or lab-grown meat. People with heightened aversion to altering natural systems are particularly swayed by a technology's perceived artificialness or naturalness. Naturalness is thus a core factor shaping public reactions to sustainability technologies, and understanding this concept can enhance communication strategies aimed at reducing public resistance.
{"title":"Naturalness shapes public support for sustainability technology","authors":"Sarah Gonzalez-Coffin, Leaf Van Boven","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101617","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101617","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sustainability technologies are critical for addressing climate change, yet public opposition can hinder their adoption. Recent research shows that perceptions of naturalness influence public support for technology. Naturalness is a multidimensional psychological construct. Technologies are seen as natural if they involve minimal processing, align with ecological norms, and are culturally aligned. More natural technologies, like afforestation, solar energy, and plant-based foods, are viewed as safer, more beneficial, familiar, and positive garnering greater public support than less natural technologies like direct air capture, nuclear energy, or lab-grown meat. People with heightened aversion to altering natural systems are particularly swayed by a technology's perceived artificialness or naturalness. Naturalness is thus a core factor shaping public reactions to sustainability technologies, and understanding this concept can enhance communication strategies aimed at reducing public resistance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"67 ","pages":"Article 101617"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145600532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-22DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101619
Anne E Urai , Fabian Dablander , Jan Willem Bolderdijk
Changing individual and collective behavior is critical to addressing the climate and ecological crisis. Environmental psychology is thus well-positioned to contribute knowledge to guide impactful climate action. However, we argue that it is not living up to its full potential, partly because its theories often remain verbal. Formalizing theories — expressing them in the precise language of mathematics or computer code — is especially important to give substance to thinking about complex systems, where nonlinearities and feedback loops make the effect of interventions hard to predict. Formal theories increase conceptual clarity and mechanistic understanding, advance cumulative science, enable ‘in silico’ intervention testing, and improve integration into policy-relevant models. We illustrate how environmental psychologists can start incorporating theory formalization in their work.
{"title":"Impactful environmental psychology needs formal theories","authors":"Anne E Urai , Fabian Dablander , Jan Willem Bolderdijk","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101619","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101619","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Changing individual and collective behavior is critical to addressing the climate and ecological crisis. Environmental psychology is thus well-positioned to contribute knowledge to guide impactful climate action. However, we argue that it is not living up to its full potential, partly because its theories often remain verbal. Formalizing theories — expressing them in the precise language of mathematics or computer code — is especially important to give substance to thinking about complex systems, where nonlinearities and feedback loops make the effect of interventions hard to predict. Formal theories increase conceptual clarity and mechanistic understanding, advance cumulative science, enable ‘<em>in silico</em>’ intervention testing, and improve integration into policy-relevant models. We illustrate how environmental psychologists can start incorporating theory formalization in their work.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101619"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145571446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-20DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101616
Elizabeth Jefferies , Jonathan Smallwood
Semantic cognition allows us to understand language, interpret perceptual inputs, retrieve knowledge, and generate meaningful thought. The default mode network (DMN) is often engaged during semantic tasks, yet its precise contribution remains debated, given its involvement in a broad range of cognitive states and domains, including spontaneous thought, autobiographical memory, and social cognition. This review argues that while the DMN’s role is difficult to define in traditional psychological terms, it supports several core processes essential for semantic cognition. These include integrating multisensory features, drawing on long-term knowledge to guide thought and perception, and enabling context-appropriate retrieval. The DMN’s position in the cortical hierarchy — at a maximal distance from sensory and motor regions — allows it to link diverse sources of information, represent abstract knowledge, and connect flexibly with other large-scale networks. We propose a state space framework to capture how the DMN interacts dynamically with other systems over time, based on intrinsic connectivity patterns. Semantic retrieval occurs in different network states — either when the DMN and executive control networks are co-activated to support effortful search, or when they decouple, with control systems guiding goal-directed retrieval and the DMN supporting more automatic access to knowledge. DMN regions can also couple with and separate from perceptual regions. This framework highlights how dynamic whole-brain states shape the DMN’s contributions to semantic cognition across contexts.
{"title":"A state-space perspective on the role of the default mode network in semantic cognition","authors":"Elizabeth Jefferies , Jonathan Smallwood","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101616","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101616","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Semantic cognition allows us to understand language, interpret perceptual inputs, retrieve knowledge, and generate meaningful thought. The default mode network (DMN) is often engaged during semantic tasks, yet its precise contribution remains debated, given its involvement in a broad range of cognitive states and domains, including spontaneous thought, autobiographical memory, and social cognition. This review argues that while the DMN’s role is difficult to define in traditional psychological terms, it supports several core processes essential for semantic cognition. These include integrating multisensory features, drawing on long-term knowledge to guide thought and perception, and enabling context-appropriate retrieval. The DMN’s position in the cortical hierarchy — at a maximal distance from sensory and motor regions — allows it to link diverse sources of information, represent abstract knowledge, and connect flexibly with other large-scale networks. We propose a state space framework to capture how the DMN interacts dynamically with other systems over time, based on intrinsic connectivity patterns. Semantic retrieval occurs in different network states — either when the DMN and executive control networks are co-activated to support effortful search, or when they decouple, with control systems guiding goal-directed retrieval and the DMN supporting more automatic access to knowledge. DMN regions can also couple with and separate from perceptual regions. This framework highlights how dynamic whole-brain states shape the DMN’s contributions to semantic cognition across contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101616"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145571445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-18DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101613
Feng Zhou , Benjamin Becker
Emotional experience and regulation emerge from coordinated activity across large‑scale brain networks, including the default mode network (DMN). This review synthesizes evidence for the crucial roles of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a key DMN hub, in emotional processing and regulation. We first embed the classic ventral‑positive/dorsal‑negative mPFC distinction within a DMN functional gradient framework, demonstrating that during emotional experience dorsal mPFC (dmPFC) and ventral mPFC (vmPFC) shift toward opposite ends of the DMN gradient, consistent with functional differentiation. We next reconceptualize emotion regulation along a control‑demand axis: dmPFC, in concert with frontoparietal control regions, engages during effortful reappraisal, whereas vmPFC supports automatic, low-effort processes such as extinction or placebo effects. With practice, regulation shifts toward progressively more automatic vmPFC‑based processes. We integrate vmPFC’s modality‑general affect coding with self‑referential appraisal and a low‑dimensional, grid‑structured affective map that links valuation to subjective experience. Finally, we outline future directions to probe dynamic DMN contributions to emotional processes. This perspective clarifies DMN contributions to emotional processes through distinct but complementary processes and can inform research and interventions in emotional disorders.
{"title":"The default mode network and emotion — dual roles of the medial prefrontal cortex in emotional experience and regulation","authors":"Feng Zhou , Benjamin Becker","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101613","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101613","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Emotional experience and regulation emerge from coordinated activity across large‑scale brain networks, including the default mode network (DMN). This review synthesizes evidence for the crucial roles of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a key DMN hub, in emotional processing and regulation. We first embed the classic ventral‑positive/dorsal‑negative mPFC distinction within a DMN functional gradient framework, demonstrating that during emotional experience dorsal mPFC (dmPFC) and ventral mPFC (vmPFC) shift toward opposite ends of the DMN gradient, consistent with functional differentiation. We next reconceptualize emotion regulation along a control‑demand axis: dmPFC, in concert with frontoparietal control regions, engages during effortful reappraisal, whereas vmPFC supports automatic, low-effort processes such as extinction or placebo effects. With practice, regulation shifts toward progressively more automatic vmPFC‑based processes. We integrate vmPFC’s modality‑general affect coding with self‑referential appraisal and a low‑dimensional, grid‑structured affective map that links valuation to subjective experience. Finally, we outline future directions to probe dynamic DMN contributions to emotional processes. This perspective clarifies DMN contributions to emotional processes through distinct but complementary processes and can inform research and interventions in emotional disorders.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101613"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145571444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-14DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101614
Mareike Ernst
Loneliness has been increasingly recognized as a transdiagnostic risk factor impacting both mental and physical health. This review synthesizes current meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and the most recent empirical studies to assess loneliness as a determinant of psychological symptoms and disorders, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, as well as its role in physical health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurocognitive disorders. Loneliness contributes to these health risks through multiple pathways, including stress, physiological dysregulation, and maladaptive behavioral patterns. This review also outlines research gaps and future directions: Despite consistent associations across samples and analytical strategies, methodological challenges persist — particularly in establishing causality. It remains unclear whether loneliness is a cause, correlate, or consequence of poor health, largely due to the reliance on cross-sectional studies and insufficient attention to confounders, mediators, and colliders. Addressing these limitations requires theory-driven data collection and evaluation and interdisciplinary collaboration.
{"title":"Loneliness as a transdiagnostic risk factor for mental and physical health in adulthood — state of the evidence, research gaps, and ways forward","authors":"Mareike Ernst","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101614","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101614","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Loneliness has been increasingly recognized as a transdiagnostic risk factor impacting both mental and physical health. This review synthesizes current meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and the most recent empirical studies to assess loneliness as a determinant of psychological symptoms and disorders, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, as well as its role in physical health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurocognitive disorders. Loneliness contributes to these health risks through multiple pathways, including stress, physiological dysregulation, and maladaptive behavioral patterns. This review also outlines research gaps and future directions: Despite consistent associations across samples and analytical strategies, methodological challenges persist — particularly in establishing causality. It remains unclear whether loneliness is a cause, correlate, or consequence of poor health, largely due to the reliance on cross-sectional studies and insufficient attention to confounders, mediators, and colliders. Addressing these limitations requires theory-driven data collection and evaluation and interdisciplinary collaboration.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101614"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145519666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-05DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101611
Naoto Yoshida , Henning Sprekeler , Boris Gutkin
For living beings, survival depends on effective regulation of internal physiological states through motivated behaviors. In this perspective, we propose homeostatically regulated reinforcement learning (HRRL) as a framework to describe biological agents that optimize internal states via learned predictive control strategies, integrating biological principles with computational learning. We show that HRRL inherently produces multiple behaviors such as risk aversion, anticipatory regulation, and adaptive movement, aligning with observed biological phenomena. Its extension to deep reinforcement learning enables autonomous exploration, hierarchical behavior, and potential real-world robotic applications. We argue further that HRRL offers a biologically plausible foundation for understanding motivation, learning, and decision-making, with broad implications for artificial intelligence (AI), neuroscience, and understanding the causes of psychiatric disorders, ultimately advancing our understanding of adaptive behavior in complex environments.
{"title":"Linking homeostasis to reinforcement learning: internal state control of motivated behavior","authors":"Naoto Yoshida , Henning Sprekeler , Boris Gutkin","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101611","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101611","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For living beings, survival depends on effective regulation of internal physiological states through motivated behaviors. In this perspective, we propose homeostatically regulated reinforcement learning (HRRL) as a framework to describe biological agents that optimize internal states via learned predictive control strategies, integrating biological principles with computational learning. We show that HRRL inherently produces multiple behaviors such as risk aversion, anticipatory regulation, and adaptive movement, aligning with observed biological phenomena. Its extension to deep reinforcement learning enables autonomous exploration, hierarchical behavior, and potential real-world robotic applications. We argue further that HRRL offers a biologically plausible foundation for understanding motivation, learning, and decision-making, with broad implications for artificial intelligence (AI), neuroscience, and understanding the causes of psychiatric disorders, ultimately advancing our understanding of adaptive behavior in complex environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101611"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145465391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-31DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101610
Rodrigo M Braga
The default network (DN) is associated with a variety of introspective cognitive processes. Recent developments support that the ‘canonical’ DN comprises at least two parallel distributed networks, DN-A and DN-B, which are closely interdigitated in the individual brain. However, the two networks can be clearly distinguished by their connections with different medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures, which help explain each network’s involvement in different aspects of introspection: DN-A plays a role in mental scene construction and is prominently connected to the anterior hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, and medial entorhinal cortex. Meanwhile, DN-B plays a role in social cognition and is prominently connected to the amygdala and more lateral entorhinal cortex. These different MTL connections help explain the heterogeneity of functions within the canonical DN, and putatively may shape the fractionation of these distinct networks during brain development, such that different cortical networks end up handling interactions with different MTL regions.
{"title":"The canonical default network comprises parallel distributed networks with distinct medial temporal lobe connections","authors":"Rodrigo M Braga","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101610","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101610","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The default network (DN) is associated with a variety of introspective cognitive processes. Recent developments support that the ‘canonical’ DN comprises at least two parallel distributed networks, DN-A and DN-B, which are closely interdigitated in the individual brain. However, the two networks can be clearly distinguished by their connections with different medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures, which help explain each network’s involvement in different aspects of introspection: DN-A plays a role in mental scene construction and is prominently connected to the anterior hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, and medial entorhinal cortex. Meanwhile, DN-B plays a role in social cognition and is prominently connected to the amygdala and more lateral entorhinal cortex. These different MTL connections help explain the heterogeneity of functions within the canonical DN, and putatively may shape the fractionation of these distinct networks during brain development, such that different cortical networks end up handling interactions with different MTL regions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101610"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145415566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-30DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101612
Sanna Karoliina Tirkkonen
This review examines key developments in recent research literature on the phenomenology of loneliness. In the behavioral sciences, loneliness is commonly defined as the perceived discrepancy between anticipated and actual quality of relationships. Understood as a subjective experience rather than an objective condition, loneliness is also of interest to philosophical phenomenology, which investigates lived experience through conceptual means. Concepts shape how a phenomenon is perceived as an object of study and determine which dimensions of experience are emphasized. Phenomenology examines loneliness from the first-person perspective, analyzing the fundamental structures — selfhood, intersubjectivity, affectivity, embodiment, and spatiality — that condition all experiencing. This article shows that theoretical commitments influence which types of practical solutions and therapeutic or social interventions authors propose for alleviating loneliness. The literature identifies evaluation as a notable theme, though it is mostly discussed from an individual perspective rather than in relation to the social norms and values that shape expectations of social connection. Therefore, future research should focus on analyzing these normative dimensions and their role in shaping experiences of loneliness.
{"title":"Phenomenological approaches to loneliness: a conceptual review","authors":"Sanna Karoliina Tirkkonen","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101612","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101612","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This review examines key developments in recent research literature on the phenomenology of loneliness. In the behavioral sciences, loneliness is commonly defined as the perceived discrepancy between anticipated and actual quality of relationships. Understood as a subjective experience rather than an objective condition, loneliness is also of interest to philosophical phenomenology, which investigates lived experience through conceptual means. Concepts shape how a phenomenon is perceived as an object of study and determine which dimensions of experience are emphasized. Phenomenology examines loneliness from the first-person perspective, analyzing the fundamental structures — selfhood, intersubjectivity, affectivity, embodiment, and spatiality — that condition all experiencing. This article shows that theoretical commitments influence which types of practical solutions and therapeutic or social interventions authors propose for alleviating loneliness. The literature identifies evaluation as a notable theme, though it is mostly discussed from an individual perspective rather than in relation to the social norms and values that shape expectations of social connection. Therefore, future research should focus on analyzing these normative dimensions and their role in shaping experiences of loneliness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101612"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145415567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101609
Odis Johnson Jr.
This article provides three examples in neighborhood effects research of how anti-oppressive quantitative work existed prior to the emergence of QuantCrit, and asks how might the movement regard work of this type within its history of development? In these examples, anti-oppressive quantitative and computational methodological practices demonstrate empirical innovation to reveal Black marginalization and relative white privilege. Yet, little conceptualizing within extant literature addresses the anti-oppressive work (addressing racial and intersectional oppression foremost) that predated the broad recognition of QuantCrit or how this early work may have contributed to its ascent. Despite the existence of work that uses transformative quantitative and computational practices, the works of white supremacy rationalists appear in foundational QuantCrit scholarship as the primary motivation for the much-needed epistemic shift. My contention in this article is that as the field further defines the methods of QuantCrit research, perhaps it should endeavor to curate the history of earlier quantitative and computational methodological practices that were also advancing a liberatory science and anti-racism possibilities.
{"title":"What were critical quantitative methods back then: does it inform what they are today?","authors":"Odis Johnson Jr.","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101609","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101609","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article provides three examples in neighborhood effects research of how anti-oppressive quantitative work existed prior to the emergence of QuantCrit, and asks how might the movement regard work of this type within its history of development? In these examples, anti-oppressive quantitative and computational methodological practices demonstrate empirical innovation to reveal Black marginalization and relative white privilege. Yet, little conceptualizing within extant literature addresses the anti-oppressive work (addressing racial and intersectional oppression foremost) that predated the broad recognition of QuantCrit or how this early work may have contributed to its ascent. Despite the existence of work that uses transformative quantitative and computational practices, the works of white supremacy rationalists appear in foundational QuantCrit scholarship as the primary motivation for the much-needed epistemic shift. My contention in this article is that as the field further defines the methods of QuantCrit research, perhaps it should endeavor to curate the history of earlier quantitative and computational methodological practices that were also advancing a liberatory science and anti-racism possibilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101609"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145362114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-22DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101608
Edward A. Vessel , Hannah Ovadia
Aesthetically appealing experiences, during which a person can derive hedonic pleasure from the act of sense-making, are highly impactful. In addition to modulation of sensory and reward systems, aesthetically appealing experiences with visual art engage the default mode network (DMN). DMN activity and connectivity increase for a variety of other appealing and engaging stimuli, including narratives and, in some cases, music and dance, but not during other experiences with music nor for appealing landscapes. We evaluate hypotheses for how the DMN contributes to aesthetic appeal, focusing on the network’s role in sense-making. We suggest that differential DMN engagement for aesthetically valued stimuli reflects differences in the need for integration of complex information — between external information and internal aspects of the self-construct, and also across time. By studying these rare yet deeply meaningful brain states, cognitive neuroscience can achieve a more complete understanding of complex network dynamics during naturalistic cognition.
{"title":"The role of the default mode network in aesthetic appeal","authors":"Edward A. Vessel , Hannah Ovadia","doi":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101608","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101608","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Aesthetically appealing experiences, during which a person can derive hedonic pleasure from the act of sense-making, are highly impactful. In addition to modulation of sensory and reward systems, aesthetically appealing experiences with visual art engage the default mode network (DMN). DMN activity and connectivity increase for a variety of other appealing and engaging stimuli, including narratives and, in some cases, music and dance, but not during other experiences with music nor for appealing landscapes. We evaluate hypotheses for how the DMN contributes to aesthetic appeal, focusing on the network’s role in sense-making. We suggest that differential DMN engagement for aesthetically valued stimuli reflects differences in the need for integration of complex information — between external information and internal aspects of the self-construct, and also across time. By studying these rare yet deeply meaningful brain states, cognitive neuroscience can achieve a more complete understanding of complex network dynamics during naturalistic cognition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":56191,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 101608"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2025-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145362113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}