Effects of two different social exclusion paradigms on ambiguous facial emotion recognition.

Social exclusion is an emotionally painful experience that leads to various alterations in socio-emotional processing. The perceptual and emotional consequences that may arise from experiencing social exclusion can vary depending on the paradigm used to manipulate it. Exclusion paradigms can vary in terms of the severity and duration of the leading exclusion experience, thereby classifying it as either a short-term or long-term experience. The present study aimed to study the impact of exclusion on socio-emotional processing using different paradigms that caused experiencing short-term and imagining long-term exclusion. Ambiguous facial emotions were used as socio-emotional cues. In study 1, the Ostracism Online paradigm was used to manipulate short-term exclusion. In study 2, a new sample of participants imagined long-term exclusion through the future life alone paradigm. Participants of both studies then completed a facial emotion recognition task consisting of morphed ambiguous facial emotions. By means of Point of Subjective Equivalence analyses, our results indicate that the experience of short-term exclusion hinders recognising happy facial expressions. In contrast, imagining long-term exclusion causes difficulties in recognising sad facial expressions. These findings extend the current literature, suggesting that not all social exclusion paradigms affect socio-emotional processing similarly.

Measures of the brain functional network that correlate with Alzheimer's neuropsychological test scores: An fMRI and graph analysis study.

Neural degeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) leads to structural topology deformation that in turn changes brain functionality. The main aim of the present study is to find the brain's functional connectivity network (FCN) correlates of Alzheimer's psychological test scores. To this end, the brain's FCN is extracted from the resting state functional magnetic resonance images (rs-fMRI) of healthy controls and patients with AD and represented as a graph. Then, network measures are calculated from the graphs. The correlations between the brain network measures and five AD psychological assessment test scores are evaluated. The results show positive correlation between the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and nodal strength in the left insula and negative correlation between the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) score and local efficiency of left olfactory cortex and also eigenvector centrality of left supramarginal cortex. The Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q) also seems to be correlated with network measures of the left superior parietal gyrus. Moreover, notable decreased continuity are spotted in the limbic system. These measures can be used to provide an objective tool for AD diagnosis.