{"title":"Lovers' creativity sparks under stress: fNIRS hyperscanning evidence of dating couples' creative problem-solving under stress.","authors":"Jiaqi Zhang, Yifan Wang, Hanxuan Zhao, Wenjin Duan, Yuecui Kan, Ting Yang, Linden J Ball, Suqin Lin, Haijun Duan","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2638824","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2638824","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In an age flooded with pressure, lovers' resilience under stress and ability to creatively solve problems are highly valued. It is hoped that stress could become the crucible that forges lovers' creative sparks. Understanding the associations among romantic love, stress and advanced cognitive functions is highly topical. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning, the current study investigated dating couples' creative problem-solving performance under the effect of acute stress and the corresponding underlying neural mechanism. Results indicated that when faced with stressful situations, couples showed higher fluency and flexibility in creative problem-solving than those under non-stressful conditions. In addition, the couples showed greater synchronization in the frontopolar region under stress, with the direction from males to females, unveiling a distinct cooperative pattern of males leading and females receiving. Furthermore, interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) mediated the effects that both salivary cortisol and heart rate level had on dating couples' creativity. These findings provide evidence supporting an integrative view for understanding relationships under adverse conditions, highlighting the different roles played by different genders in coping with stress.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"83-101"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147379280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2026-04-07DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2649161
M J S Krasberg-Schoett, Ralf Deichmann, Tamara Fischmann, Christian J Fiebach
{"title":"Attachment Modulates Neural Responses to Social Exclusion vs. Inclusion: An fMRI Cyberball Study in Children.","authors":"M J S Krasberg-Schoett, Ralf Deichmann, Tamara Fischmann, Christian J Fiebach","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2649161","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2649161","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Individual differences in attachment classification reflect children's social expectations given early relational experiences with primary caregivers. When experiencing rejection - when affective needs are unmet - children can develop avoidant attachment strategies, including suppression of negative emotions and inhibition of observable reactions to adversity. A key aversive situation is social rejection, but how attachment differences affect neural responses to it is poorly understood. We combined functional MRI and the Cyberball paradigm to investigate responses to social rejection in 38 children (9-11 years) classified using the Child Attachment Interview. BOLD activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) was increased for events of social exclusion relative to inclusion. Dorsal to this effect, right vlPFC showed a negative correlation between exclusion-related BOLD activity and attachment dismissal, a continuous marker for avoidant attachment, reflecting greater vlPFC responses during inclusion (fair play) for avoidant attachment but unchanged responses to exclusion, suggesting increased regulatory monitoring during fair play in higher-dismissal children, rather than altered exclusion reactivity. This may be related to greater expressed worry about exclusion despite fair play in the inclusion condition. Our results suggest that avoidant attachment in children may be associated with impaired emotion regulation and greater expectation of rejection.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"102-118"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147634421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2026-02-03DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2615214
Carolina Daffre, Allison M Detloff, Ann B Brewster, Timothy J Strauman
{"title":"Neural signatures of promotion and prevention goal activation in adolescence.","authors":"Carolina Daffre, Allison M Detloff, Ann B Brewster, Timothy J Strauman","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2615214","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2615214","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Adolescence is marked by major changes in self-regulation, goal pursuit, and brain function. Regulatory focus theory (RFT) distinguishes between promotion and prevention self-regulatory systems, activated by ideal and ought goals, respectively. These systems have been studied in adults using fMRI; however, adolescent-specific patterns of activation are not yet well understood. In a normative adult sample, observed shared and unique regions of activation associated with idiographically assessed promotion vs. prevention priming, as well as variations in BOLD response depending on whether participants believed they were or were not making progress attaining the goal. In the present developmental extension, we examined whether adolescents exhibited neural activation patterns in response to ideal and ought priming consistent with adult findings. We measured brain activation during goal priming in 47 healthy adolescents (ages 13-17). Analyses revealed a linear increase in BOLD response to personally meaningful (vs. yoked control) goal-related adjectives across repeated priming blocks in regions including the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus - regions associated with self-referential processing and regulatory focus. These results suggest that adolescents recruit neural circuits associated with self-relevant cognition in response to promotion and prevention goals.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"64-82"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146114703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-05DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2614481
Riadh Ouerchefani, Brahim Kammoun, Mohamed Riadh Ben Rejeb, Didier Le Gall
{"title":"The role of executive functions and cognitive estimation in decision-making: a study with patients with prefrontal cortex damage.","authors":"Riadh Ouerchefani, Brahim Kammoun, Mohamed Riadh Ben Rejeb, Didier Le Gall","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2614481","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2614481","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Evidence remained conflicting regarding how the prefrontal cortex supported decision-making abilities, particularly in patients with focal prefrontal cortex lesions. While damage to this region was known to impair executive functioning, the precise contribution of such deficits to decision-making performance - especially under varying levels of uncertainty - remained debated. Moreover, cognitive estimation processes, which were associated with logical reasoning and prefrontal involvement, had rarely been examined in relation to decision-making tasks. To clarify these associations, we administered a cognitive estimation task and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), alongside a battery of executive function tests, to 30 patients with focal prefrontal damage and 30 matched control subjects. Our results indicated that patients showed consistent impairment across executive functions, cognitive estimation, and decision-making under risk. Furthermore, correlation and regression analyses revealed that performance on executive tasks and cognitive estimation predicted IGT outcomes, particularly under risk conditions. Finally, voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping identified a bilateral prefrontal network - spanning ventromedial, dorsomedial, and dorsolateral regions - associated with impaired IGT performance. These findings suggested that the multidimensional nature of the IGT was associated with complex executive and inferential reasoning demands and implicated diverse patterns of frontal dysfunction beyond the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146120663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-11DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2628717
Valerio Placidi, Giovanna Cuomo, Sarah Boukarras, Vanessa Era, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Matteo Candidi
{"title":"Interpersonal coordination with a virtual outgroup increases motor preparation demands but it is not modulated by mPFC inhibition.","authors":"Valerio Placidi, Giovanna Cuomo, Sarah Boukarras, Vanessa Era, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Matteo Candidi","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2628717","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2628717","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ethnic differences trigger immediate implicit stereotyping, potentially influencing intergroup interactions and reinforcing social inequality. Studies indicate that ethnic biases can reduce sensorimotor resonance toward out-group members, identifying the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) as part of a network involved in ethnic stereotyping regulation. The specific impact of ethnic biases on individuals' ability to coordinate actions with others and the role of mPFC in mediating in-/out-group interactions remain unclear. We investigated whether: i) interfering with mPFC activity modulates ethnic biases measured through affective misattribution procedure (AMP); ii) this interference affects coordination during a joint action task with ethnic out/in-group virtual partners. Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) was used to interfere with the activity of mPFC (Experiments 1, 3) or left ventral Premotor Cortex (Experiment 2), and Vertex stimulation was included as active control site. Stimulating mPFC did not significantly affect either ethnic bias as measured through AMP nor individuals' interaction abilities when coordinating with out-/in-group members. However, participants' motor preparation times increased when interacting with an ethnic out-group compared to an in-group partner, regardless of the stimulation site. These findings highlight how ethnic membership influences social categorization and motor abilities during interpersonal interactions while limiting the role of mPFC in mediating inter-group motor coordination as measured in the present study.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"42-61"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146167760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-01-29DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2622102
Xuena Wang, Shihui Han
{"title":"Context-dependent hierarchical categorization of human faces: behavioral and EEG/MEG evidence.","authors":"Xuena Wang, Shihui Han","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2622102","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2622102","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social categorization of faces provides a key cognitive basis of human behavior and may occur along various dimensions of facial attributes. The present study investigated a potential hierarchical structure of social categorization of faces based on a superordinate (Species) versus a subordinate (Race) level of abstraction of facial attributes. We recorded behavioral performances in a face classification task and found faster responses to the same set of Asian faces when presented alternately with dog faces (a species context) relative to Black faces (a race context). In addition, using a repetition suppression (RS) paradigm, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals to Asian faces in the species and race contexts, respectively. Our analyses of the RS effects on EEG/MEG signals revealed earlier neural encoding of similarity of Asian faces in the right fusiform gyrus at 140-200 ms and in the left temporoparietal junction at 317-413 ms after stimulus onset when Asian faces were displayed in the species (vs. race) context. These behavioral and EEG/MEG findings unravel the neurocognitive mechanisms of context-dependent social categorization of faces by highlighting its hierarchically organized structure based on different levels of facial attributes.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"27-41"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146087240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-25DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2634989
Steven W Anderson
{"title":"Deciphering the mechanisms of impaired decision-making.","authors":"Steven W Anderson","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2634989","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2634989","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"25-26"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147285923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-12-01Epub Date: 2026-02-27DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2026.2634298
Agnieszka Pluta, Karolina Golec-Staśkiewicz
{"title":"Advances in understanding mentalizing: exploring neurobiological and behavioral perspectives across diverse populations.","authors":"Agnieszka Pluta, Karolina Golec-Staśkiewicz","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2634298","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2026.2634298","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"281-286"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147318908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-12-01Epub Date: 2025-04-30DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2025.2498384
Marcelina Wiśniewska, Aleksandra Piejka, Tomasz Wolak, Dirk Scheele, Łukasz Okruszek
{"title":"Loneliness - not for the faint of heart? Effects of transient loneliness induction on neural and parasympathetic responses to affective stimuli.","authors":"Marcelina Wiśniewska, Aleksandra Piejka, Tomasz Wolak, Dirk Scheele, Łukasz Okruszek","doi":"10.1080/17470919.2025.2498384","DOIUrl":"10.1080/17470919.2025.2498384","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While loneliness has been associated with altered neural activity in social brain networks and reduced heart rate variability (HRV) in response to social stressors, it is still unclear whether these are related or parallel effects. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the relationship between loneliness and neural and parasympathetic responses to social stimuli by using an experimental induction of momentary loneliness. Sixty-three participants (18-35 y.o.) received manipulated feedback about their future relationships to induce either loneliness (Future Alone, FA; <i>n</i> = 31) or feelings of belonging (Future Belong, FB, <i>n</i> = 32) and completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session with concomitant HRV measurement during which affective pictures with social or nonsocial content were presented. In line with our previous research, decreased vagal flexibility and more negative affect were observed in participants subjected to the loneliness induction. Furthermore, even though no significant between-group differences in neural activity were observed, the neural response to negative social vs nonsocial stimuli in the temporoparietal junction was positively associated with the parasympathetic response, and this relationship was stronger in the FA group. Taken together, these results suggest that transient feelings of loneliness may disrupt adaptive responding to environmental demands and negatively impact brain-heart interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":49511,"journal":{"name":"Social Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"319-332"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144059067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}