Dopamine and deep brain stimulation accelerate the neural dynamics of volitional action in Parkinson's disease.

The ability to initiate volitional action is fundamental to human behaviour. Loss of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson's disease is associated with impaired action initiation, also termed akinesia. Both dopamine and subthalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) can alleviate akinesia, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. An important question is whether dopamine and DBS facilitate de novo build-up of neural dynamics for motor execution or accelerate existing cortical movement initiation signals through shared modulatory circuit effects. Answering these questions can provide the foundation for new closed-loop neurotherapies with adaptive DBS, but the objectification of neural processing delays prior to performance of volitional action remains a significant challenge. To overcome this challenge, we studied readiness potentials and trained brain signal decoders on invasive neurophysiology signals in 25 DBS patients (12 female) with Parkinson's disease during performance of self-initiated movements. Combined sensorimotor cortex electrocorticography (ECoG) and subthalamic local field potential (LFP) recordings were performed OFF therapy (N = 22), ON dopaminergic medication (N = 18) and ON subthalamic deep brain stimulation (N = 8). This allowed us to compare their therapeutic effects on neural latencies between the earliest cortical representation of movement intention as decoded by linear discriminant analysis classifiers and onset of muscle activation recorded with electromyography (EMG). In the hypodopaminergic OFF state, we observed long latencies between motor intention and motor execution for readiness potentials and machine learning classifications. Both, dopamine and DBS significantly shortened these latencies, hinting towards a shared therapeutic mechanism for alleviation of akinesia. To investigate this further, we analysed directional cortico-subthalamic oscillatory communication with multivariate granger causality. Strikingly, we found that both therapies independently shifted cortico-subthalamic oscillatory information flow from antikinetic beta (13-35 Hz) to prokinetic theta (4-10 Hz) rhythms, which was correlated with latencies in motor execution. Our study reveals a shared brain network modulation pattern of dopamine and DBS that may underlie the acceleration of neural dynamics for augmentation of movement initiation in Parkinson's disease. Instead of producing or increasing preparatory brain signals, both therapies modulate oscillatory communication. These insights provide a link between the pathophysiology of akinesia and its' therapeutic alleviation with oscillatory network changes in other non-motor and motor domains, e.g. related to hyperkinesia or effort and reward perception. In the future, our study may inspire the development of clinical brain computer interfaces based on brain signal decoders to provide temporally precise support for action initiation in patients with brain disorders.

Nonfrontal Control of Working Memory.

Items held in visual working memory can be quickly updated, replaced, removed, and even manipulated in accordance with current behavioral goals. Here, we use multivariate pattern analyses to identify the patterns of neuronal activity that realize the executive control processes supervising these flexible stores. We find that portions of the middle temporal gyrus and the intraparietal sulcus represent what item is cued for continued memorization independently of representations of the item itself. Importantly, this selection-specific activity could not be explained by sensory representations of the cue and is only present when control is exerted. Our results suggest that the selection of memorized items might be controlled in a distributed and decentralized fashion. This evidence provides an alternative perspective to the notion of "domain general" central executive control over memory function.

Working memory signals in early visual cortex are present in weak and strong imagers.

It has been suggested that visual images are memorized across brief periods of time by vividly imagining them as if they were still there. In line with this, the contents of both working memory and visual imagery are known to be encoded already in early visual cortex. If these signals in early visual areas were indeed to reflect a combined imagery and memory code, one would predict them to be weaker for individuals with reduced visual imagery vividness. Here, we systematically investigated this question in two groups of participants. Strong and weak imagers were asked to remember images across brief delay periods. We were able to reliably reconstruct the memorized stimuli from early visual cortex during the delay. Importantly, in contrast to the prediction, the quality of reconstruction was equally accurate for both strong and weak imagers. The decodable information also closely reflected behavioral precision in both groups, suggesting it could contribute to behavioral performance, even in the extreme case of completely aphantasic individuals. Our data thus suggest that working memory signals in early visual cortex can be present even in the (near) absence of phenomenal imagery.

Have you been there before? Decoding recognition of spatial scenes from fMRI signals in precuneus.

One potential application of forensic "brain reading" is to test whether a suspect has previously experienced a crime scene. Here, we investigated whether it is possible to decode real life autobiographic exposure to spatial locations using fMRI. In the first session, participants visited four out of eight possible rooms on a university campus. During a subsequent scanning session, subjects passively viewed pictures and videos from these eight possible rooms (four old, four novel) without giving any responses. A multivariate searchlight analysis was employed that trained a classifier to distinguish between "seen" versus "unseen" stimuli from a subset of six rooms. We found that bilateral precuneus encoded information that can be used to distinguish between previously seen and unseen rooms and that also generalized to the two stimuli left out from training. We conclude that activity in bilateral precuneus is associated with the memory of previously visited rooms, irrespective of the identity of the room, thus supporting a parietal contribution to episodic memory for spatial locations. Importantly, we could decode whether a room was visited in real life without the need of explicit judgments about the rooms. This suggests that recognition is an automatic response that can be decoded from fMRI data, thus potentially supporting forensic applications of concealed information tests for crime scene recognition.

Sensory-Tactile Functional Mapping and Use-Associated Structural Variation of the Human Female Genital Representation Field.

The precise location of the human female genital representation field in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is controversial and its capacity for use-associated structural variation as a function of sexual behavior remains unknown. We used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-compatible sensory-tactile stimulation paradigm to functionally map the location of the female genital representation field in 20 adult women. Neural response to tactile stimulation of the clitoral region (vs right hand) identified individually-diverse focal bilateral activations in dorsolateral areas of S1 (BA1-BA3) in alignment with anatomic location. We next used cortical surface analyses to assess structural thickness across the 10 individually most activated vertices per hemisphere for each woman. We show that frequency of sexual intercourse within 12 months is correlated with structural thickness of the individually-mapped left genital field. Our results provide a precise functional localization of the female genital field and provide support for use-associated structural variation of the human genital cortex.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We provide a precise location of the human female genital field in the somatosensory cortex and, for the first time, provide evidence in support of structural variation of the human genital field in association with frequency of genital contact. Our study represents a significant methodological advance by individually mapping genital fields for structural analyses. On a secondary level, our results suggest that any study investigating changes in the human genital field must map the field individually to achieve sufficient precision. Our results pave the way for future research into the plasticity of the human genital cortex as a function of normal or adverse experience as well as changes in pathologic conditions, i.e., sexual dysfunction, sexual deviation, or sexual risk-taking behavior.

Categorical working memory codes in human visual cortex.

Working memory contents are represented in neural activity patterns across multiple regions of the cortical hierarchy. A division of labor has been proposed where more anterior regions harbor increasingly abstract and categorical representations while the most detailed representations are held in primary sensory cortices. Here, using fMRI and multivariate encoding modeling, we demonstrate that for color stimuli categorical codes are already present at the level of extrastriate visual cortex (V4 and VO1), even when subjects are neither implicitly nor explicitly encouraged to categorize the stimuli. Importantly, this categorical coding was observed during working memory, but not during perception. Thus, visual working memory is likely to rely at least in part on categorical representations. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Working memory is the representational basis for human cognition. Recent work has demonstrated that numerous regions across the human brain can represent the contents of working memory. We use fMRI brain scanning and machine learning methods to demonstrate that different regions can represent the same content differently during working memory. Reading out the neural codes used to store working memory contents, we show that already in sensory cortex, areas V4 and VO1 represent color in a categorical format rather than a purely sensory fashion. Thereby, we provide a better understanding of how different regions of the brain might serve working memory and cognition.

Amyloid pathology but not APOE ε4 status is permissive for tau-related hippocampal dysfunction.

We investigated whether the impact of tau-pathology on memory performance and on hippocampal/medial temporal memory function in non-demented individuals depends on the presence of amyloid pathology, irrespective of diagnostic clinical stage. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the observational, multicentric DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study (DELCODE). Two hundred and thirty-five participants completed task functional MRI and provided CSF (92 cognitively unimpaired, 100 experiencing subjective cognitive decline and 43 with mild cognitive impairment). Presence (A+) and absence (A-) of amyloid pathology was defined by CSF amyloid-ß42 (Aß42) levels. Free recall performance in the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test, scene recognition memory accuracy and hippocampal/medial temporal functional MRI novelty responses to scene images were related to CSF total-tau and phospho-tau levels separately for A+ and A- individuals. We found that total-tau and phospho-tau levels were negatively associated with memory performance in both tasks and with novelty responses in the hippocampus and amygdala, in interaction with Aß42 levels. Subgroup analyses showed that these relationships were only present in A+ and remained stable when very high levels of tau (>700 pg/ml) and phospho-tau (>100 pg/ml) were excluded. These relationships were significant with diagnosis, age, education, sex, assessment site and Aß42 levels as covariates. They also remained significant after propensity score based matching of phospho-tau levels across A+ and A- groups. After classifying this matched sample for phospho-tau pathology (T-/T+), individuals with A+/T+ were significantly more memory-impaired than A-/T+ despite the fact that both groups had the same amount of phospho-tau pathology. ApoE status (presence of the E4 allele), a known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, did not mediate the relationship between tau pathology and hippocampal function and memory performance. Thus, our data show that the presence of amyloid pathology is associated with a linear relationship between tau pathology, hippocampal dysfunction and memory impairment, although the actual severity of amyloid pathology is uncorrelated. Our data therefore indicate that the presence of amyloid pathology provides a permissive state for tau-related hippocampal dysfunction and hippocampus-dependent recognition and recall impairment. This raises the possibility that in the predementia stage of Alzheimer's disease, removing the negative impact of amyloid pathology could improve memory and hippocampal function even if the amount of tau-pathology in CSF is not changed, whereas reducing increased CSF tau-pathology in amyloid-negative individuals may not proportionally improve memory function.

Immediate impact of child maltreatment on mental, developmental, and physical health trajectories.

OBJECTIVE: The immediate impact of child maltreatment on health and developmental trajectories over time is unknown. Longitudinal studies starting in the direct aftermath of exposure with repeated follow-up are needed. METHOD: We assessed health and developmental outcomes in 6-month intervals over 2 years in 173 children, aged 3-5 years at study entry, including 86 children with exposure to emotional and physical abuse or neglect within 6 months and 87 nonmaltreated children. Assessments included clinician-administered, self- and parent-report measures of psychiatric and behavioral symptoms, development, and physical health. Linear mixed models and latent growth curve analyses were used to contrast trajectories between groups and to investigate the impact of maltreatment features on trajectories. RESULTS: Maltreated children exhibited greater numbers of psychiatric diagnoses (b = 1.998, p < .001), externalizing (b = 13.29, p < .001) and internalizing (b = 11.70, p < .001) symptoms, impairments in cognitive (b = -11.586, p < .001), verbal (b = -10.687, p < .001), and motor development (b = -7.904, p = .006), and greater numbers of medical symptoms (b = 1.021, p < .001) compared to nonmaltreated children across all time-points. Lifetime maltreatment severity and/or age at earliest maltreatment exposure predicted adverse outcomes over time. CONCLUSION: The profound, immediate, and stable impact of maltreatment on health and developmental trajectories supports a biological embedding model and provides foundation to scrutinize the precise underlying mechanisms. Such knowledge will enable the development of early risk markers and mechanism-driven interventions that mitigate adverse trajectories in maltreated children.

Resting-State Network Alterations Differ between Alzheimer's Disease Atrophy Subtypes.

Several Alzheimer's disease (AD) atrophy subtypes were identified, but their brain network properties are unclear. We analyzed data from two independent datasets, including 166 participants (103 AD/63 controls) from the DZNE-longitudinal cognitive impairment and dementia study and 151 participants (121 AD/30 controls) from the AD neuroimaging initiative cohorts, aiming to identify differences between AD atrophy subtypes in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging intra-network connectivity (INC) and global and nodal network properties. Using a data-driven clustering approach, we identified four AD atrophy subtypes with differences in functional connectivity, accompanied by clinical and biomarker alterations, including a medio-temporal-predominant (S-MT), a limbic-predominant (S-L), a diffuse (S-D), and a mild-atrophy (S-MA) subtype. S-MT and S-D showed INC reduction in the default mode, dorsal attention, visual and limbic network, and a pronounced reduction of "global efficiency" and decrease of the "clustering coefficient" in parietal and temporal lobes. Despite severe atrophy in limbic areas, the S-L exhibited only marginal global network but substantial nodal network failure. S-MA, in contrast, showed limited impairment in clinical and cognitive scores but pronounced global network failure. Our results contribute toward a better understanding of heterogeneity in AD with the detection of distinct differences in functional connectivity networks accompanied by CSF biomarker and cognitive differences in AD subtypes.

Freedom from what? Separating lay concepts of freedom.

Debates about freedom of will and action and their connections with moral responsibility have raged for centuries, but the opposing sides might disagree because they use different concepts of freedom. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that people who assert freedom in a determined (D) or counterfactual-intervener (CI) scenario assert this because they are thinking about freedom from constraint and not about freedom from determination (in D) or from inevitability (in CI). We also hypothesized that people who deny that freedom in D or in CI deny this because they are thinking about freedom from determination or from inevitability, respectively, and not about freedom from constraint. To test our hypotheses, we conducted two main online studies. Study I supported our hypotheses that people who deny freedom in D and CI are thinking about freedom from determinism and from inevitability, respectively, but these participants seemed to think about freedom from constraint when they were later considering modified scenarios where acts were not determined or inevitable. Study II investigated a contrary bypassing hypothesis that those who deny freedom in D denied this because they took determinism to exclude mental causation and hence to exclude freedom from constraint. We found that participants who took determinism to exclude freedom generally did not deny causation by mental states, here represented by desires and decisions. Their responses regarding causation by desires and decisions at most weakly mediated the relation between determinism and freedom or responsibility among this subgroup of our participants. These results speak against the bypassing hypothesis and in favor of our hypothesis that these participants were not thinking about freedom from constraint.

Psychophysics and computational modeling of feature-continuous motion perception.

Sensory decision-making is frequently studied using categorical tasks, even though the feature space of most stimuli is continuous. Recently, it has become more common to measure feature perception in a gradual fashion, say when studying motion perception across the full space of directions. However, continuous reports can be contaminated by perceptual or motor biases. Here, we examined such biases on perceptual reports by comparing two response methods. With the first method, participants reported motion direction in a motor reference frame by moving a trackball. With the second method, participants used a perceptual frame of reference with a perceptual comparison stimulus. We tested biases using three different versions of random dot kinematograms. We found strong and systematic biases in responses when reporting the direction in a motor frame of reference. For the perceptual frame of reference, these systematic biases were not evident. Independent of the response method, we also detected a systematic misperception where subjects sometimes confuse the physical stimulus direction with its opposite direction. This was confirmed using a von Mises mixture model that estimated the contribution of veridical perception, misperception, and guessing. Importantly, the more sensitive perceptual reporting method revealed that, with increasing levels of sensory evidence, perceptual performance increases not only in the form of higher detection probability, but under certain conditions also in the form of increased precision.

Decoding verbal working memory representations of Chinese characters from Broca's area.

Representations of sensory working memory can be found across the entire neocortex. But how are verbal working memory (VWM) contents retained in the human brain? Here we used fMRI and multi-voxel pattern analyses to study Chinese native speakers (15 males, 13 females) memorizing Chinese characters. Chinese characters are uniquely suitable to study VWM because verbal encoding is encouraged by their complex visual appearance and monosyllabic pronunciation. We found that activity patterns in Broca's area and left premotor cortex carried information about the memorized characters. These language-related areas carried (1) significantly more information about cued characters than those not cued for memorization, (2) significantly more information on the left than the right hemisphere and (3) significantly more information about Chinese symbols than complex visual patterns which are hard to verbalize. In contrast, early visual cortex carries a comparable amount of information about cued and uncued stimuli and is thus unlikely to be involved in memory retention. This study provides evidence for verbal working memory maintenance in a distributed network of language-related brain regions, consistent with distributed accounts of WM. The results also suggest that Broca's area and left premotor cortex form the articulatory network which serves articulatory rehearsal in the retention of verbal working memory contents.

Measuring the mental.

Many philosophers have argued that the subjective character of conscious experience results in a fundamental deficit of third-person (henceforth: extrospective) access to first-person experience. By comparing extrospective measurement techniques with measurement techniques in the natural sciences, we will argue that extrospective methods suffer from no such deficit. After a rejection of some principled objections against extrospective methods, a historical comparison with the development of measurement techniques in the natural sciences will show that extrospective measuring methods are still in an early stage of development. However, they can be significantly improved by way of a bootstrapping strategy, similar to that which has proven successful in the development of physical measurement techniques. One reason to expect such improvement is the availability of multiple sources of evidence, which should allow for substantial advances in extrospective measurement techniques. Finally, we will discuss new developments in pain measurement in order to show that the bootstrapping strategy is already bearing fruit.

Inverse transformed encoding models - a solution to the problem of correlated trial-by-trial parameter estimates in fMRI decoding.

Techniques of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) can be used to decode the discrete experimental condition or a continuous modulator variable from measured brain activity during a particular trial. In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), trial-wise response amplitudes are sometimes estimated from the measured signal using a general linear model (GLM) with one onset regressor for each trial. When using rapid event-related designs with trials closely spaced in time, those estimates are highly variable and serially correlated due to the temporally extended shape of the hemodynamic response function (HRF). Here, we describe inverse transformed encoding modelling (ITEM), a principled approach of accounting for those serial correlations and decoding from the resulting estimates, at low computational cost and with no loss in statistical power. We use simulated data to show that ITEM outperforms the current standard approach in terms of decoding accuracy and analyze empirical data to demonstrate that ITEM is capable of visual reconstruction from fMRI signals.

No evidence for mnemonic modulation of interocularly suppressed visual input.

Visual working memory (VWM) allows for keeping visual information available for upcoming goal-directed behavior, while new visual input is processed concurrently. Interactions between the mnemonic and perceptual systems cause VWM to affect the processing of visual input in a content-specific manner: visual input that is initially suppressed from consciousness is detected faster when it matches rather than mismatches the content of VWM. It is currently under debate whether such mnemonic influences on perception occur prior to or after conscious access. To address this issue, we investigated whether VWM content modulates the neural response to visual input that remains suppressed from consciousness. We measured fMRI responses to interocularly suppressed stimuli in 20 human participants performing a delayed match-to-sample task: Participants were retro-cued to memorize one of two geometrical shapes for subsequent recognition. During retention, an interocularly suppressed peripheral stimulus (the probe) was briefly presented, which was either of the cued (memorized) or uncued (not memorized) shape category. We found no evidence that VWM content modulated the neural response to the probe. Substantial evidence for the absence of this modulation was found despite leveraging a highly liberal analysis approach: (1) selecting regions of interest that were particularly prone to detecting said modulation, and (2) using directional Bayesian tests favoring the presence of the hypothesized modulation. We did observe faster detection of memory-matching compared to memory-mismatching probes in a behavioral control experiment, thus validating the stimulus set. We conclude that VWM impacts the processing of visual input only once suppression is mostly alleviated.

Preparation and execution of voluntary action both contribute to awareness of intention.

How and when motor intentions form has long been controversial. In particular, the extent to which motor preparation and action-related processes produce a conscious experience of intention remains unknown. Here, we used a brain-computer interface (BCI) while participants performed a self-paced movement task to trigger cues upon the detection of a readiness potential (a well-characterized brain signal that precedes movement) or in its absence. The BCI-triggered cues instructed participants either to move or not to move. Following this instruction, participants reported whether they felt they were about to move at the time the cue was presented. Participants were more likely to report an intention (i) when the cue was triggered by the presence of a readiness potential than when the same cue was triggered by its absence, and (ii) when they had just made an action than when they had not. We further describe a time-dependent integration of these two factors: the probability of reporting an intention was maximal when cues were triggered in the presence of a readiness potential, and when participants also executed an action shortly afterwards. Our results provide a first systematic investigation of how prospective and retrospective components are integrated in forming a conscious intention to move.

Orbitofrontal Signaling of Future Reward is Associated with Hyperactivity in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Alterations in motivated behavior are a hallmark of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays a key role in controlling goal-directed behavior, but the link between OFC dysfunction and behavioral deficits in ADHD, particularly in adolescence, remains poorly understood. Here we used advanced high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human OFC in adolescents with ADHD and typically developing (TD) controls (N = 39, age 12-16, all male except for one female per group) to study reward-related OFC responses and how they relate to behavioral dysfunction in ADHD. During fMRI data acquisition, participants performed a simple decision-making task, allowing us to image expectation-related responses to small and large monetary outcomes. Across all participants, we observed significant signal increases to large versus small expected rewards in the OFC. These responses were significantly enhanced in ADHD relative to TD participants. Moreover, stronger reward-related activity was correlated with individual differences in hyperactive/impulsive symptoms in the ADHD group, whereas high cognitive ability was associated with normalized OFC responses. These results provide evidence for the importance of OFC dysfunctions in the neuropathology of ADHD, highlighting the role of OFC-dependent goal-directed control mechanisms in this disorder.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by alterations in motivated behavior which can be understood as diminished goal-directed control. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays a key role in controlling goal-directed behavior, but its potential contribution to ADHD symptomatology remains poorly understood. Using high-resolution fMRI, we show that adolescent ADHD patients display enhanced OFC signaling of future rewards and that these increased reward-related responses are correlated with the severity of hyperactivity/impulsivity. These findings suggest that an inability to adequately evaluate future outcomes may translate into maladaptive behavior in ADHD patients. They also challenge the idea that dysfunctions in dopaminergic brain areas are the sole contributor to reward-related symptoms in ADHD and point to a central contribution of goal-directed control circuits in hyperactivity.

Interactions between neural decision-making circuits predict long-term dietary treatment success in obesity.

Although dietary decision-making is regulated by multiple interacting neural controllers, their impact on dietary treatment success in obesity has only been investigated individually. Here, we used fMRI to test how well interactions between the Pavlovian system (automatically triggering urges of consumption after food cue exposure) and the goal-directed system (considering long-term consequences of food decisions) predict future dietary success achieved in 39 months. Activity of the Pavlovian system was measured with a cue-reactivity task by comparing perception of food versus control pictures, activity of the goal-directed system with a food-specific delay discounting paradigm. Both tasks were applied in 30 individuals with obesity up to five times: Before a 12-week diet, immediately thereafter, and at three annual follow-up visits. Brain activity was analyzed in two steps. In the first, we searched for areas involved in Pavlovian processes and goal-directed control across the 39-month study period with voxel-wise linear mixed-effects (LME) analyses. In the second, we computed network parameters reflecting the covariation of longitudinal voxel activity (i.e. principal components) in the regions identified in the first step and used them to predict body mass changes across the 39 months with LME models. Network analyses testing the link of dietary success with activity of the individual systems as reference found a moderate negative link to Pavlovian activity primarily in left hippocampus and a moderate positive association to goal-directed activity primarily in right inferior parietal gyrus. A cross-paradigm network analysis that integrated activity measured in both tasks revealed a strong positive link for interactions between visual Pavlovian areas and goal-directed decision-making regions mainly located in right insular cortex. We conclude that adaptation of food cue processing resources to goal-directed control activity is an important prerequisite of sustained dietary weight loss, presumably since the latter activity can modulate Pavlovian urges triggered by frequent cue exposure in everyday life.

View-Independent Working Memory Representations of Artificial Shapes in Prefrontal and Posterior Regions of the Human Brain.

Traditional views of visual working memory postulate that memorized contents are stored in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex using an adaptive and flexible code. In contrast, recent studies proposed that contents are maintained by posterior brain areas using codes akin to perceptual representations. An important question is whether this reflects a difference in the level of abstraction between posterior and prefrontal representations. Here, we investigated whether neural representations of visual working memory contents are view-independent, as indicated by rotation-invariance. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analyses, we show that when subjects memorize complex shapes, both posterior and frontal brain regions maintain the memorized contents using a rotation-invariant code. Importantly, we found the representations in frontal cortex to be localized to the frontal eye fields rather than dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. Thus, our results give evidence for the view-independent storage of complex shapes in distributed representations across posterior and frontal brain regions.

A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction.

Being able to comprehend another person's intentions and emotions is essential for successful social interaction. However, it is currently unknown whether the human brain possesses a neural mechanism that attracts people to others whose mental states they can easily understand. Here we show that the degree to which a person feels attracted to another person can change while they observe the other's affective behavior, and that these changes depend on the observer's confidence in having correctly understood the other's affective state. At the neural level, changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the reward system of the observer's brain. Importantly, these effects were specific to individual observer-target pairs and could not be explained by a target's general attractiveness or expressivity. Furthermore, using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we found that neural activity in the reward system of the observer's brain varied as a function of how well the target's affective behavior matched the observer's neural representation of the underlying affective state: The greater the match, the larger the brain's intrinsic reward signal. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that reward-related neural activity during social encounters signals how well an individual's "neural vocabulary" is suited to infer another person's affective state, and that this intrinsic reward might be a source of changes in interpersonal attraction.