Dissecting "Peer Presence" and "Decisions" to Deepen Understanding of Peer Influence on Adolescent Risky Choice.

This study evaluated the aspects of complex decisions influenced by peers, and components of peer involvement influential to adolescents' risky decisions. Participants (N = 140) aged 13-25 completed the Columbia Card Task (CCT), a risky choice task, isolating deliberation-reliant and affect-reliant decisions while alone, while a friend monitors choices, and while a friend is merely present. There is no condition in which a nonfriend peer is present. Results demonstrated the risk-increasing peer effect occurred in the youngest participants in the cold CCT and middle-late adolescents in the hot CCT, whereas other ages and contexts showed a risk-decreasing peer effect. Mere presence was not sufficient to influence risky behavior. These boundaries in age, decision, and peer involvement constrain prevailing models of adolescent peer influence.

Caffeine alters emotion and emotional responses in low habitual caffeine consumers.

Caffeine reliably increases emotional arousal, but it is unclear whether and how it influences other dimensions of emotion such as emotional valence. These experiments documented whether caffeine influences emotion and emotion regulation choice and success. Low to abstinent caffeine consumers (maximum 100 mg/day) completed measures of state anxiety, positive and negative emotion, and salivary cortisol before, 45 min after, and 75 min after consuming 400 mg caffeine or placebo. Participants also completed an emotion regulation choice task, in which they chose to employ cognitive reappraisal or distraction in response to high and low intensity negative pictures (Experiment 1), or a cognitive reappraisal task, in which they employed cognitive reappraisal or no emotion regulation strategy in response to negative and neutral pictures (Experiment 2). State anxiety, negative emotion, and salivary cortisol were heightened both 45 and 75 min after caffeine intake relative to placebo. In Experiment 1, caffeine did not influence the frequency with which participants chose reappraisal or distraction, but reduced negativity of the picture ratings. In Experiment 2, caffeine did not influence cognitive reappraisal success. Thus, caffeine mitigated emotional responses to negative situations, but not how participants chose to regulate such responses or the success with which they did so.

Non-invasive brain stimulation targeting the right fusiform gyrus selectively increases working memory for faces.

The human extrastriate cortex contains a region critically involved in face detection and memory, the right fusiform gyrus. The present study evaluated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting this anatomical region would selectively influence memory for faces versus non-face objects (houses). Anodal tDCS targeted the right fusiform gyrus (Brodmann's Area 37), with the anode at electrode site PO10, and cathode at FP2. Two stimulation conditions were compared in a repeated-measures design: 0.5mA versus 1.5mA intensity; a separate control group received no stimulation. Participants completed a working memory task for face and house stimuli, varying in memory load from 1 to 4 items. Individual differences measures assessed trait-based differences in facial recognition skills. Results showed 1.5mA intensity stimulation (versus 0.5mA and control) increased performance at high memory loads, but only with faces. Lower overall working memory capacity predicted a positive impact of tDCS. Results provide support for the notion of functional specialization of the right fusiform regions for maintaining face (but not non-face object) stimuli in working memory, and further suggest that low intensity electrical stimulation of this region may enhance demanding face working memory performance particularly in those with relatively poor baseline working memory skills.

Local and long-range functional connectivity is reduced in concert in autism spectrum disorders.

Long-range cortical functional connectivity is often reduced in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but the nature of local cortical functional connectivity in ASD has remained elusive. We used magnetoencephalography to measure task-related local functional connectivity, as manifested by coupling between the phase of alpha oscillations and the amplitude of gamma oscillations, in the fusiform face area (FFA) of individuals diagnosed with ASD and typically developing individuals while they viewed neutral faces, emotional faces, and houses. We also measured task-related long-range functional connectivity between the FFA and the rest of the cortex during the same paradigm. In agreement with earlier studies, long-range functional connectivity between the FFA and three distant cortical regions was reduced in the ASD group. However, contrary to the prevailing hypothesis in the field, we found that local functional connectivity within the FFA was also reduced in individuals with ASD when viewing faces. Furthermore, the strength of long-range functional connectivity was directly correlated to the strength of local functional connectivity in both groups; thus, long-range and local connectivity were reduced proportionally in the ASD group. Finally, the magnitude of local functional connectivity correlated with ASD severity, and statistical classification using local and long-range functional connectivity data identified ASD diagnosis with 90% accuracy. These results suggest that failure to entrain neuronal assemblies fully both within and across cortical regions may be characteristic of ASD.

Spontaneous mentalizing predicts the fundamental attribution error.

When explaining the reasons for others' behavior, perceivers often overemphasize underlying dispositions and personality traits over the power of the situation, a tendency known as the fundamental attribution error. One possibility is that this bias results from the spontaneous processing of others' mental states, such as their momentary feelings or more enduring personality characteristics. Here, we use fMRI to test this hypothesis. Participants read a series of stories that described a target's ambiguous behavior in response to a specific social situation and later judged whether that act was attributable to the target's internal dispositions or to external situational factors. Neural regions consistently associated with mental state inference-especially, the medial pFC-strongly predicted whether participants later made dispositional attributions. These results suggest that the spontaneous engagement of mentalizing may underlie the biased tendency to attribute behavior to dispositional over situational forces.

Interactions between transient and sustained neural signals support the generation and regulation of anxious emotion.

Anxious emotion can manifest on brief (threat response) and/or persistent (chronic apprehension and arousal) timescales, and prior work has suggested that these signals are supported by separable neural circuitries. This fMRI study utilized a mixed block-event-related emotional provocation paradigm in 55 healthy participants to simultaneously measure brief and persistent anxious emotional responses, testing the specificity of, and interactions between, these potentially distinct systems. Results indicated that components of emotional processing networks were uniquely sensitive to transient and sustained anxious emotion. Whereas the amygdala and midbrain showed only transient responses, the ventral basal forebrain and anterior insula showed sustained activity during extended emotional contexts that tracked positively with task-evoked anxiety. States of lesser anxiety were associated with greater sustained activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, ventromedial prefrontal recruitment was lower in individuals with higher scores on intolerance of uncertainty measures, and this hyporecruitment predicted greater transient amygdala responding to potential threat cues. This work demonstrates how brain circuitries interact across temporal scales to support brief and persistent anxious emotion and suggests potentially divergent mechanisms of dysregulation in clinical syndromes marked by brief versus persistent symptoms of anxiety.

Impaired theory of mind for moral judgment in high-functioning autism.

High-functioning autism (ASD) is characterized by real-life difficulties in social interaction; however, these individuals often succeed on laboratory tests that require an understanding of another person's beliefs and intentions. This paradox suggests a theory of mind (ToM) deficit in adults with ASD that has yet to be demonstrated in an experimental task eliciting ToM judgments. We tested whether ASD adults would show atypical moral judgments when they need to consider both the intentions (based on ToM) and outcomes of a person's actions. In experiment 1, ASD and neurotypical (NT) participants performed a ToM task designed to test false belief understanding. In experiment 2, the same ASD participants and a new group of NT participants judged the moral permissibility of actions, in a 2 (intention: neutral/negative) × 2 (outcome: neutral/negative) design. Though there was no difference between groups on the false belief task, there was a selective difference in the moral judgment task for judgments of accidental harms, but not neutral acts, attempted harms, or intentional harms. Unlike the NT group, which judged accidental harms less morally wrong than attempted harms, the ASD group did not reliably judge accidental and attempted harms as morally different. In judging accidental harms, ASD participants appeared to show an underreliance on information about a person's innocent intention and, as a direct result, an overreliance on the action's negative outcome. These findings reveal impairments in integrating mental state information (e.g., beliefs, intentions) for moral judgment.

Social-cognitive deficits in normal aging.

A sizeable number of studies have implicated the default network (e.g., medial prefrontal and parietal cortices) in tasks that require participants to infer the mental states of others (i.e., to mentalize). Parallel research has demonstrated that default network function declines over the lifespan, suggesting that older adults may show impairments in social-cognitive tasks that require mentalizing. Older and younger human adults were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing three different social-cognitive tasks. Across three mentalizing paradigms, younger and older adults viewed animated shapes in brief social vignettes, stories about a person's moral actions, and false belief stories. Consistent with predictions, older adults responded less accurately to stories about others' false beliefs and made less use of actors' intentions to judge the moral permissibility of behavior. These impairments in performance during social-cognitive tasks were accompanied by age-related decreases across all three paradigms in the BOLD response of a single brain region, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest specific task-independent age-related deficits in mentalizing that are localizable to changes in circumscribed subregions of the default network.

Functional neuroimaging and psychology: what have you done for me lately?

Functional imaging has become a primary tool in the study of human psychology but is not without its detractors. Although cognitive neuroscientists have made great strides in understanding the neural instantiation of countless cognitive processes, commentators have sometimes argued that functional imaging provides little or no utility for psychologists. And indeed, myriad studies over the last quarter century have employed the technique of brain mapping-identifying the neural correlates of various psychological phenomena-in ways that bear minimally on psychological theory. How can brain mapping be made more relevant to behavioral scientists broadly? Here, we describe three trends that increase precisely this relevance: (i) the use of neuroimaging data to adjudicate between competing psychological theories through forward inference, (ii) isolating neural markers of information processing steps to better understand complex tasks and psychological phenomena through probabilistic reverse inference, and (iii) using brain activity to predict subsequent behavior. Critically, these new approaches build on the extensive tradition of brain mapping, suggesting that efforts in this area-although not initially maximally relevant to psychology-can indeed be used in ways that constrain and advance psychological theory.

Dissociable neural systems supporting knowledge about human character and appearance in ourselves and others.

Functional neuroimaging has identified a neural system comprising posterior cingulate (pCC) and medial prefrontal (mPFC) cortices that appears to mediate self-referential thought. It is unclear whether the two components of this system mediate similar or different psychological processes, and how specific this system is for self relative to others. In an fMRI study, we compared brain responses for evaluation of character (e.g., honest) versus appearance (e.g., svelte) for oneself, one's mother (a close other), and President Bush (a distant other). There was a double dissociation between dorsal mPFC, which was more engaged for character than appearance judgments, and pCC, which was more engaged for appearance than character judgments. A ventral region of mPFC was engaged for judgments involving one's own character and appearance, and one's mother's character, but not her appearance. A follow-up behavioral study indicated that participants rate their own character and appearance, and their mother's character, but not her appearance, as important in their self-concept. This suggests that ventral mPFC activation reflects its role in processing information relevant to the self, but not limited to the self. Thus, specific neural systems mediate specific aspects of thinking about character and appearance in oneself and in others.

Face value: amygdala response reflects the validity of first impressions.

The human amygdala responds to first impressions of people as judged from their faces, such as normative judgments about the trustworthiness of strangers. It is unknown, however, whether amygdala responses to first impressions can be validated by objective criteria. Here, we examined amygdala responses to faces of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) where real-world outcomes could be measured objectively by the amounts of profits made by each CEO's company. During fMRI scanning, participants made incidental judgments about the symmetry of each CEO's face. After scanning, participants rated each CEO's face on leadership ability. Parametric analyses showed that greater left amygdala response to the CEOs' faces was associated with higher post-scan ratings of the CEOs' leadership ability. In addition, greater left amygdala response was also associated with greater profits made by the CEOs' companies and this relationship was statistically mediated by external raters' perceptions of arousal. Thus, amygdala response reflected both subjective judgments and objective measures of leadership ability based on first impressions.

Associations and dissociations between default and self-reference networks in the human brain.

Neuroimaging has revealed consistent activations in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) extending to precuneus both during explicit self-reference tasks and during rest, a period during which some form of self-reference is assumed to occur in the default mode of brain function. The similarity between these two patterns of midline cortical activation may reflect a common neural system for explicit and default-mode self-reference, but there is little direct evidence about the similarities and differences between the neural systems that mediate explicit self-reference versus default-mode self-reference during rest. In two experiments, we compared directly the brain regions activated by explicit self-reference during judgments about trait adjectives and by rest conditions relative to a semantic task without self-reference. Explicit self-reference preferentially engaged dorsal MPFC, rest preferentially engaged precuneus, and both self-reference and rest commonly engaged ventral MPFC and PCC. These findings indicate that there are both associations (shared components) and dissociations between the neural systems underlying explicit self-reference and the default mode of brain function.

Interpreting ambiguous social cues in unpredictable contexts.

Unpredictable environments can be anxiety-provoking and elicit exaggerated emotional responses to aversive stimuli. Even neutral stimuli, when presented in an unpredictable fashion, prime anxiety-like behavior and elicit heightened amygdala activity. The amygdala plays a key role in initiating responses to biologically relevant information, such as facial expressions of emotion. While some expressions clearly signal negative (anger) or positive (happy) events, other expressions (e.g. surprise) are more ambiguous in that they can predict either valence, depending on the context. Here, we sought to determine whether unpredictable presentations of ambiguous facial expressions would bias participants to interpret them more negatively. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and facial electromyography (EMG) to characterize responses to predictable vs unpredictable presentations of surprised faces. We observed moderate but sustained increases in amygdala reactivity to predictable presentations of surprised faces, and relatively increased amygdala responses to unpredictable faces that then habituated, similar to previously observed responses to clearly negative (e.g. fearful) faces. We also observed decreased corrugator EMG responses to predictable surprised face presentations, similar to happy faces, and increased responses to unpredictable surprised face presentations, similar to angry faces. Taken together, these data suggest that unpredictability biases people to interpret ambiguous social cues negatively.

Large-scale functional network overlap is a general property of brain functional organization: Reconciling inconsistent fMRI findings from general-linear-model-based analyses.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies regularly use univariate general-linear-model-based analyses (GLM). Their findings are often inconsistent across different studies, perhaps because of several fundamental brain properties including functional heterogeneity, balanced excitation and inhibition (E/I), and sparseness of neuronal activities. These properties stipulate heterogeneous neuronal activities in the same voxels and likely limit the sensitivity and specificity of GLM. This paper selectively reviews findings of histological and electrophysiological studies and fMRI spatial independent component analysis (sICA) and reports new findings by applying sICA to two existing datasets. The extant and new findings consistently demonstrate several novel features of brain functional organization not revealed by GLM. They include overlap of large-scale functional networks (FNs) and their concurrent opposite modulations, and no significant modulations in activity of most FNs across the whole brain during any task conditions. These novel features of brain functional organization are highly consistent with the brain's properties of functional heterogeneity, balanced E/I, and sparseness of neuronal activity, and may help reconcile inconsistent GLM findings.

Direct current stimulation of the left temporoparietal junction modulates dynamic humor appreciation.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation targeting the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) on humor appreciation during a dynamic video rating task. In a within-participants design, we targeted the left TPJ with anodal, cathodal, or no transcranial direct current stimulation, centered at electrode site C3 using a 4×1 targeted stimulation montage. During stimulation, participants dynamically rated a series of six stand-up comedy videos for perceived humor. We measured event-related (time-locked to crowd laughter) modulation of humor ratings as a function of stimulation condition. Results showed decreases in rated humor during anodal (vs. cathodal or none) stimulation; this pattern was evident for the majority of videos and was only partially predicted by individual differences in humor style. We discuss the possibility that upregulation of neural circuits involved in the theory of mind and empathizing with others may reduce appreciation of aggressive humor. In conclusion, the present data show that neuromodulation of the TPJ can alter the mental processes underlying humor appreciation, suggesting critical involvement of this cortical region in detecting, comprehending, and appreciating humor.

Increasing breadth of semantic associations with left frontopolar direct current brain stimulation: a role for individual differences.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of left frontopolar versus auditory (control) cortex transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the breadth of semantic associations produced in a cued free association task. A within-participants design administered anodal tDCS over the left frontopolar or auditory cortex, centered at electrode site AFZ or T7 using a 4×1 targeted stimulation montage. During stimulation, participants produced free associates in response to cues designed to promote narrow, moderate, or broad semantic associations. We measured the latent semantic associative strength of generated words relative to cues. The cue manipulation produced expected effects on the associative breadth of generated words, but there was no main effect of stimulation site, and calculated Bayes factors showed strong support for the null hypothesis. However, individual differences in creative potential, as assessed by the remote associates test, reliably and positively predicted increases in associative breadth under the frontopolar versus the auditory control condition, but only in response to narrow cues. In conclusion, the present data support neuroimaging studies demonstrating the involvement of left frontopolar cortical regions in generating relatively broad semantic associations. They also provide novel evidence that individual differences in creative potential may modulate the influence of brain stimulation on the breadth of generated semantic associations.

Subclinical delusional thinking predicts lateral temporal cortex responses during social reflection.

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated associations between delusions in psychotic disorders and abnormalities of brain areas involved in social cognition, including medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), posterior cingulate cortex, and lateral temporal cortex (LTC). General population studies have linked subclinical delusional thinking to impaired social cognition, raising the question of whether a specific pattern of brain activity during social perception is associated with delusional beliefs. Here, we tested the hypothesis that subclinical delusional thinking is associated with changes in neural function, while subjects made judgments about themselves or others ['social reflection' (SR)]. Neural responses during SR and non-social tasks, as well as resting-state activity, were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 22 healthy subjects. Delusional thinking was measured using the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory. Delusional thinking was negatively correlated with responses of the left LTC during SR (r = -0.61, P = 0.02, Bonferroni corrected), and connectivity between the left LTC and left ventral MPFC, and was positively correlated with connectivity between the left LTC and the right middle frontal and inferior temporal cortices. Thus, delusional thinking in the general population may be associated with reduced activity and aberrant functional connectivity of cortical areas involved in SR.

Neural responses during social reflection in relatives of schizophrenia patients: relationship to subclinical delusions.

BACKGROUND: Deficits in the capacity to reflect about the self and others ("social reflection" [SR]) have been identified in schizophrenia, as well as in people with a genetic or clinical risk for the disorder. However, the neural underpinnings of these abnormalities are incompletely understood. METHODS: Responses of a network of brain regions known to be involved in self and other processing (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and superior temporal gyrus (STG)) were measured during SR in 16 first-degree, non-psychotic relatives (RELS) of schizophrenia patients and 16 healthy controls (CONS). Because of prior evidence linking dysfunction in this network and delusions, associations between SR-related responses of this network and subclinical delusions (measured using the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory) were also examined. RESULTS: Compared with CONS, RELS showed significantly less SR-related activity of the right and left PCC and STG. Moreover, response magnitudes were negatively correlated with levels of delusional thinking across both groups. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that aberrant function of the neural circuitry underpinning SR is associated with the genetic liability to schizophrenia and confers vulnerability to delusional beliefs.

Lifespan development: the effects of typical aging on theory of mind.

Whether typical aging is associated with impairments in social understanding is a topic of critical importance in characterizing the changes that occur in older adulthood. Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to represent other's mental states, and has been tested in a variety of different paradigms in older adults. The overarching research question has been whether ToM abilities may rely on other cognitive abilities, such as processing speed or executive functioning, and as such declines in ToM may reflect a decline in general meta-representational abilities. Alternatively, ToM abilities may be relatively spared, suggesting the acquisition of a sort of social wisdom with advancing age. The preponderance of the evidence is in line with the first possibility: namely, ToM, as measured by paradigms involving faces, cartoons, stories, and videos is typically impaired in social aging, and these impairments are at least partly mediated by impairments in executive functions and fluid intelligence (but not typically by crystallized intelligence). Neuroimaging investigations suggest that older adults who perform as well as younger adults may activate compensatory mechanisms, but are impaired in the brain mechanisms most closely associated with ToM ability when their task performance is impaired. Recent methodological advances allowing continuous rather than categorical assessment of ToM show that ToM may be observed to function independently from general cognition in aging, but further investigation is needed to confirm this point. Implications of these findings for the longstanding discussion regarding Theory of Mind's endangered status as a special cognitive module are discussed.

Does context matter in evaluations of stigmatized individuals? An fMRI study.

The manner in which disparate affective responses shape attitudes toward other individuals has received a great deal of attention in neuroscience research. However, the malleability of these affective responses remains largely unexplored. The perceived controllability of a stigma (whether or not the bearer of the stigma is perceived as being responsible for his or her condition) has been found to polarize behavioral affective responses to that stigma. The current study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates underlying the evaluation of stigmatized individuals (people who are homeless) when perceptions of the controllability of their condition are altered. Results demonstrated that perceivers engaged neural networks implicated in inferring intentionality (e.g. the medial prefrontal cortex) when they evaluated a homeless individual who was described as being responsible for becoming homeless. Conversely, neural networks associated with resolving strong affective responses (e.g. insula) were engaged when evaluating a homeless individual who was described as not being responsible for becoming homeless.