Social cognitive and affective neuroscience
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Aug 2016
Primary somatosensory contribution to action observation brain activity-combining fMRI and cTBS.
Traditionally the mirror neuron system (MNS) only includes premotor and posterior parietal cortices. However, somatosensory cortices, BA1/2 in particular, are also activated during action execution and observation. Here, we examine whether BA1/2 and the parietofrontal MNS integrate information by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-guided continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) to perturb BA1/2. ⋯ This analysis identifies brain regions exchanging action-specific information with BA1/2 by mapping voxels away from the coil with cTBS-induced, action-observation-specific BOLD contrast changes that mirror those under the coil. This reveals BA1/2 exchanges action-specific information with premotor, posterior parietal and temporal nodes of the MNS during action observation. Although anatomical connections between BA1/2 and these regions are well known, this is the first demonstration that these connections carry action-specific signals during observation and hence, that BA1/2 plays a causal role in the human MNS.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Apr 2016
Theory of mind mediates the prospective relationship between abnormal social brain network morphology and chronic behavior problems after pediatric traumatic brain injury.
Childhood and adolescence coincide with rapid maturation and synaptic reorganization of distributed neural networks that underlie complex cognitive-affective behaviors. These regions, referred to collectively as the 'social brain network' (SBN) are commonly vulnerable to disruption from pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, the mechanisms that link morphological changes in the SBN to behavior problems in this population remain unclear. In 98 children and adolescents with mild to severe TBI, we acquired 3D T1-weighted MRIs at 2-8 weeks post-injury. ⋯ Mediation analysis indicated that impaired theory of mind mediated the prospective relationship between abnormal SBN morphology and more frequent chronic behavior problems. Our findings suggest that sub-acute alterations in SBN morphology indirectly contribute to long-term behavior problems via their influence on ToM. Volumetric change in the SBN and its putative hub regions may represent useful imaging biomarkers for prediction of post-acute social cognitive impairment, which may in turn elevate risk for chronic behavior problems.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Nov 2015
Threat/reward-sensitivity and hypomanic-personality modulate cognitive-control and attentional neural processes to emotional stimuli.
Temperamental-traits (e.g. threat/reward-sensitivity) are found to modulate cognitive-control and attentional-processes. Yet, it is unclear exactly how these traits interact with emotional-stimuli in the modulation of cognitive-control, as reflected by the N2 event-related potential (ERP), and attentional-processes, as reflected by the P2 and P3 ERPs. Here in an ERP emotional-Go/NoGo task, 36 participants were instructed to inhibit their response to Fearful- and Happy-faces. ⋯ Conversely, the modulation of attentional-processing was specific to threat-sensitivity, as there was no relationship between either reward-sensitivity or hypomanic-personality and attentional-processing. Elevated threat-sensitivity was associated with enhanced early (P2s) and later (P3s) attentional-processing to Fearful-NoGo (relative to Happy-NoGo) faces. These latter findings support the negative attentional-bias model relating elevated threat-sensitivity with attentional-biases toward negative-stimuli and away from positive-stimuli.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · May 2015
Neural coding of assessing another person's knowledge based on nonverbal cues.
For successful communication, conversational partners need to estimate each other's current knowledge state. Nonverbal facial and bodily cues can reveal relevant information about how confident a speaker is about what they are saying. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we aimed to identify brain regions that encode how confident a speaker is perceived to be. ⋯ Our results suggest a distinct role of two neural networks known to support social inferences, the so-called mentalizing and the mirroring network. While activation in both networks underlies the processing of nonverbal cues, only activity in the mentalizing network, most notably the medial prefrontal cortex and the bilateral temporoparietal junction, is modulated by how confident the respondent is judged to be. Our results support an integrative account of the mirroring and mentalizing network, in which the two systems support each other in aiding pragmatic processing.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · May 2015
BDNFval66met affects neural activation pattern during fear conditioning and 24 h delayed fear recall.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), the most abundant neutrophin in the mammalian central nervous system, is critically involved in synaptic plasticity. In both rodents and humans, BDNF has been implicated in hippocampus- and amygdala-dependent learning and memory and has more recently been linked to fear extinction processes. Fifty-nine healthy participants, genotyped for the functional BDNFval66met polymorphism, underwent a fear conditioning and 24h-delayed extinction protocol while skin conductance and blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) responses (functional magnetic resonance imaging) were acquired. ⋯ During early extinction, 24h later, we again observed heightened responses in several regions ascribed to the fear network in met-carriers as opposed to val-carriers (insula, amygdala, hippocampus), which likely reflects fear memory recall. No differences were observed during late extinction, which likely reflects learned extinction. Our data thus support previous associations of the BDNFval66met polymorphism with neural activation in the fear and extinction network, but speak against a specific association with fear extinction processes.