Social cognitive and affective neuroscience
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Feb 2014
Hormonal contraceptives, menstrual cycle and brain response to faces.
Both behavioral and neuroimaging evidence support a female advantage in the perception of human faces. Here we explored the possibility that this relationship may be partially mediated by female sex hormones by investigating the relationship between the brain's response to faces and the use of oral contraceptives, as well as the phase of the menstrual cycle. First, functional magnetic resonance images were acquired in 20 young women [10 freely cycling and 10 taking oral contraception (OC)] during two phases of their cycle: mid-cycle and menstruation. ⋯ Next, this relationship between the use of OC and FFA response was replicated in an independent sample of 110 adolescent girls. Finally in a parallel behavioral study carried out in another sample of women, we found no evidence of differences in the pattern of eye movements while viewing faces between freely cycling women vs those taking oral contraceptives. The imaging findings might indicate enhanced processing of social cues in women taking OC and women during mid-cycle.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Dec 2013
'Put on your poker face': neural systems supporting the anticipation for expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal.
It is a unique human ability to regulate negative thoughts and feelings. Two well-investigated emotion-regulation strategies (ERSs), cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, are associated with overlapping prefrontal neural correlates, but differ temporally during the emotion-generation process. Although functional imaging studies have mainly investigated these ERS as a reaction to an emotion-inducing event, the intention to regulate upcoming negative emotions might already be associated with differences in neural activity. ⋯ The intention to suppress emotions was associated with increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral putamen, pre-supplementary motor area and right supramarginal gyrus (FWE-corrected). This enhanced proactive inhibitory control: (i) predicted decreased motoric activity during the actual suppression of emotional expressions and (2) trended toward a significant association with how successfully participants suppressed their emotions. However, neural correlates of preparatory control for cognitive reappraisal were not observed, possibly because contextual cues about the upcoming emotional stimulus are necessary to proactively start to cognitively reinterpret the situation.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Aug 2013
Validating the truth of propositions: behavioral and ERP indicators of truth evaluation processes.
We investigated processes of truth validation during reading. Participants responded to 'true' and 'false' probes after reading simple true or false sentences. Compatible sentence/probe combinations (true/'true', false/'false') facilitated responding compared with incompatible combinations (true/'false', false/'true'), indicating truth validation. ⋯ Paralleling behavioral results, this electroencephalographic marker only obtained in the evaluative mindset condition. Further, mere semantic mismatches between subject and object of sentences led to an elevated N400 for both mindset conditions. Taken together, our findings suggest that truth validation is a conditionally automatic process that is dependent on the current task demands and resulting mindset, whereas the processing of word meaning and semantic relations between words proceeds in an unconditionally automatic fashion.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Aug 2013
Reduced functional connectivity within and between 'social' resting state networks in autism spectrum conditions.
Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have difficulties in social interaction and communication, which is reflected in hypoactivation of brain regions engaged in social processing, such as medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), amygdala and insula. Resting state studies in ASC have identified reduced connectivity of the default mode network (DMN), which includes mPFC, suggesting that other resting state networks incorporating 'social' brain regions may also be abnormal. Using seed-based connectivity and group independent component analysis (ICA) approaches, we looked at resting functional connectivity in ASC between specific 'social' brain regions, as well as within and between whole networks incorporating these regions. ⋯ This was underlined by reduced seed-based connectivity between the insula and amygdala. The results demonstrate significantly reduced functional connectivity within and between resting state networks incorporating 'social' brain regions. This reduced connectivity may result in difficulties in communication and integration of information across these networks, which could contribute to the impaired processing of social signals in ASC.
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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci · Jun 2013
Frontal theta and beta synchronizations for monetary reward increase visual working memory capacity.
Visual working memory (VWM) capacity is affected by motivational influences; however, little is known about how reward-related brain activities facilitate the VWM systems. To investigate the dynamic relationship between VWM- and reward-related brain activities, we conducted time-frequency analyses using electroencephalograph (EEG) data obtained during a monetary-incentive delayed-response task that required participants to memorize the position of colored disks. In case of a correct answer, participants received a monetary reward (0, 10 or 50 Japanese yen) announced at the beginning of each trial. ⋯ Moreover, frontal beta activities (24 Hz) were identified as reward-related activities, because delay-period amplitudes correlated with increases in VWM capacity between high-reward and no-reward conditions. Interestingly, cross-frequency couplings between frontal theta and beta phases were observed only under high-reward conditions. These findings suggest that the functional dynamic linking between VWM-related theta and reward-related beta activities on the frontal regions plays an integral role in facilitating increases in VWM capacity.