{"title":"Effects of peer victimization on cortical processing of social-evaluative stress in patients with major depressive disorder.","authors":"Benjamin Iffland, Hanna Kley, Frank Neuner","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae037","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae037","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Peer victimization contributes to the development of major depressive disorders (MDDs). While previous studies reported differentiated peripheral physiological responses in peer-victimized individuals with depression, little is known about potential alterations of cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to social stimuli in depressive patients with a history of peer victimization. Using a social condition paradigm, the present study examined whether peer victimization alters conditioned cortical responses to potentially threatening social stimuli in MDD patients and healthy controls. In the task, we studied ERPs to conditioned stimuli (CSs), i.e. still images of faces, that were coupled to unconditioned socially negative and neutral evaluative video statements. Peer victimization was related to more pronounced P100 amplitudes in reaction to negative and neutral CSs. Attenuated P200 amplitudes in peer-victimized individuals were found in response to negative CSs. Cortical responses to CSs were not influenced by a diagnosis of MDD. The results suggest altered responsiveness to interpersonal information in peer-victimized individuals. Facilitated early processing of social threat indicators may prevent peer-victimized individuals from adaptive responses to social cues, increasing their vulnerability for depression.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11182063/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141319412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
James B Wyngaarden, Camille R Johnston, Daniel Sazhin, Jeff B Dennison, Ori Zaff, Dominic Fareri, Michael McCloskey, Lauren B Alloy, David V Smith, Johanna M Jarcho
{"title":"Corticostriatal responses to social reward are linked to trait reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use in young adults.","authors":"James B Wyngaarden, Camille R Johnston, Daniel Sazhin, Jeff B Dennison, Ori Zaff, Dominic Fareri, Michael McCloskey, Lauren B Alloy, David V Smith, Johanna M Jarcho","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae033","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae033","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Aberrant levels of reward sensitivity have been linked to substance use disorder and are characterized by alterations in reward processing in the ventral striatum (VS). Less is known about how reward sensitivity and subclinical substance use relate to striatal function during social rewards (e.g. positive peer feedback). Testing this relation is critical for predicting risk for development of substance use disorder. In this pre-registered study, participants (N = 44) underwent fMRI while completing well-matched tasks that assess neural response to reward in social and monetary domains. Contrary to our hypotheses, aberrant reward sensitivity blunted the relationship between substance use and striatal activation during receipt of rewards, regardless of domain. Moreover, exploratory whole-brain analyses showed unique relations between substance use and social rewards in temporoparietal junction. Psychophysiological interactions demonstrated that aberrant reward sensitivity is associated with increased connectivity between the VS and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during social rewards. Finally, we found that substance use was associated with decreased connectivity between the VS and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for social rewards, independent of reward sensitivity. These findings demonstrate nuanced relations between reward sensitivity and substance use, even among those without substance use disorder, and suggest altered reward-related engagement of cortico-VS responses as potential predictors of developing disordered behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11182064/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141083058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Simone P Haller, Joel Stoddard, Sofia I Cardenas, Kelly Dombek, Caroline MacGillivray, Christian Botz-Zapp, Hong N T Bui, Caitlin M Stavish, Katharina Kircanski, Matt Jones, Melissa A Brotman
{"title":"Differentiating neural sensitivity and bias during face-emotion processing in youth: a computational approach.","authors":"Simone P Haller, Joel Stoddard, Sofia I Cardenas, Kelly Dombek, Caroline MacGillivray, Christian Botz-Zapp, Hong N T Bui, Caitlin M Stavish, Katharina Kircanski, Matt Jones, Melissa A Brotman","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae034","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae034","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability to interpret face-emotion displays is critical for the development of adaptive social interactions. Using a novel variant of a computational model and fMRI data, we examined behavioral and neural associations between two metrics of face-emotion labeling (sensitivity and bias) and age in youth. Youth and adults (n = 44, M age = 20.02, s.d. = 7.44, range = 8-36) completed an explicit face-emotion labeling fMRI task including happy to angry morphed face emotions. A drift-diffusion model was applied to choice and reaction time distributions to examine sensitivity and bias in interpreting face emotions. Model fit and reliability of parameters were assessed on adult data (n = 42). Linear and quadratic slopes modeled brain activity associated with dimensions of face-emotion valence and ambiguity during interpretation. Behaviorally, age was associated with sensitivity. The bilateral anterior insula exhibited a more pronounced neural response to ambiguity with older age. Associations between sensitivity and bias metrics and activation patterns indicated that systems encoding face-emotion valence and ambiguity both contribute to the ability to discriminate face emotions. The current study provides evidence for age-related improvement in perceptual sensitivity to facial affect across adolescence and young adulthood.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11173199/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141094732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abigail Casalvera, Madeline Goodwin, Kevin G Lynch, Marta Teferi, Milan Patel, Christian Grillon, Monique Ernst, Nicholas L Balderston
{"title":"Threat of shock increases distractor susceptibility during the short-term maintenance of visual information.","authors":"Abigail Casalvera, Madeline Goodwin, Kevin G Lynch, Marta Teferi, Milan Patel, Christian Grillon, Monique Ernst, Nicholas L Balderston","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae036","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae036","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Elevated arousal in anxiety is thought to affect attention control. To test this, we designed a visual short-term memory (VSTM) task to examine distractor suppression during periods of threat and no-threat. We hypothesized that threat would impair performance when subjects had to filter out large numbers of distractors. The VSTM task required subjects to attend to one array of squares while ignoring a separate array. The number of target and distractor squares varied systematically, with high (four squares) and low (two squares) target and distractor conditions. This study comprised two separate experiments. Experiment 1 used startle responses and white noise as to directly measure threat-induced anxiety. Experiment 2 used BOLD to measure brain responses. For Experiment 1, subjects showed significantly larger startle responses during threat compared to safe period, supporting the validity of the threat manipulation. For Experiment 2, we found that accuracy was affected by threat, such that the distractor load negatively impacted accuracy only in the threat condition. We also found threat-related differences in parietal cortex activity. Overall, these findings suggest that threat affects distractor susceptibility, impairing filtering of distracting information. This effect is possibly mediated by hyperarousal of parietal cortex during threat.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11173208/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141176891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social and Affective Neuroscience: Ensuring our future.","authors":"Matthew D Lieberman","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae035","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae035","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11215486/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141176890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daniel Alcalá-López, Ning Mei, Pedro Margolles, David Soto
{"title":"Brain-wide representation of social knowledge.","authors":"Daniel Alcalá-López, Ning Mei, Pedro Margolles, David Soto","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae032","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae032","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding how the human brain maps different dimensions of social conceptualizations remains a key unresolved issue. We performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study in which participants were exposed to audio definitions of personality traits and asked to simulate experiences associated with the concepts. Half of the concepts were affective (e.g. empathetic), and the other half were non-affective (e.g. intelligent). Orthogonally, half of the concepts were highly likable (e.g. sincere) and half were socially undesirable (e.g. liar). Behaviourally, we observed that the dimension of social desirability reflected the participant's subjective ratings better than affect. FMRI decoding results showed that both social desirability and affect could be decoded in local patterns of activity through distributed brain regions including the superior temporal, inferior frontal, precuneus and key nodes of the default mode network in posterior/anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Decoding accuracy was better for social desirability than affect. A representational similarity analysis further demonstrated that a deep language model significantly predicted brain activity associated with the concepts in bilateral regions of superior and anterior temporal lobes. The results demonstrate a brain-wide representation of social knowledge, involving default model network systems that support the multimodal simulation of social experience, with a further reliance on language-related preprocessing.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11173195/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141158126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Multidimensional neural representations of social features during movie viewing.","authors":"Haemy Lee Masson, Lucy Chang, Leyla Isik","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae030","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae030","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The social world is dynamic and contextually embedded. Yet, most studies utilize simple stimuli that do not capture the complexity of everyday social episodes. To address this, we implemented a movie viewing paradigm and investigated how everyday social episodes are processed in the brain. Participants watched one of two movies during an MRI scan. Neural patterns from brain regions involved in social perception, mentalization, action observation and sensory processing were extracted. Representational similarity analysis results revealed that several labeled social features (including social interaction, mentalization, the actions of others, characters talking about themselves, talking about others and talking about objects) were represented in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG). The mentalization feature was also represented throughout the theory of mind network, and characters talking about others engaged the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), suggesting that listeners may spontaneously infer the mental state of those being talked about. In contrast, we did not observe the action representations in the frontoparietal regions of the action observation network. The current findings indicate that STG and MTG serve as key regions for social processing, and that listening to characters talk about others elicits spontaneous mental state inference in TPJ during natural movie viewing.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11130526/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140900779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Laura Schäfer, Carina Köppel, Denise Kreßner-Kiel, Sarah Schwerdtfeger, Marie Michael, Kerstin Weidner, Ilona Croy
{"title":"The scent of cuteness-neural signatures of infant body odors.","authors":"Laura Schäfer, Carina Köppel, Denise Kreßner-Kiel, Sarah Schwerdtfeger, Marie Michael, Kerstin Weidner, Ilona Croy","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae038","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae038","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The smell of the own baby is a salient cue for human kin recognition and bonding. We hypothesized that infant body odors function like other cues of the Kindchenschema by recruiting neural circuits of pleasure and reward. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, we presented infantile and post-pubertal body odors to nulliparae and mothers (N = 78). All body odors increased blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response and functional connectivity in circuits related to olfactory perception, pleasure and reward. Neural activation strength in pleasure and reward areas positively correlated with perceptual ratings across all participants. Compared to body odor of post-pubertal children, infant body odors specifically enhanced BOLD signal and functional connectivity in reward and pleasure circuits, suggesting that infantile body odors prime the brain for prosocial interaction. This supports the idea that infant body odors are part of the Kindchenschema. The additional observation of functional connectivity being related to maternal and kin state speaks for experience-dependent priming.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11192622/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141294101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond physical sensations: investigating empathy and prosocial behavior in vicarious pain responders.","authors":"Yoad Ben Adiva, Shir Genzer, Anat Perry","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae039","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae039","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Empathy, the capacity to share others' emotional experiences, has been proposed as a key motivation for altruistic behavior in both humans and animals. Sharing another's emotional experience may generate a self-embodied simulation of their emotional state, fostering understanding and promoting prosocial behavior. Vicarious pain responders report sensing physical pain when observing others in pain. Whether this ability extends to emotional experiences remains unexplored. Using both questionnaires and ecologically valid behavioral tasks, we explored whether vicarious pain responders differ from nonresponders in empathic abilities and prosocial behavior. Participants watched video clips of people describing a negative emotional life event. We operationalized several empathic abilities and responses (empathic accuracy, affective synchrony, emotional reaction, and empathic motivation) based on participants' and targets' responses during and after watching the videos. Participants were also engaged in a donation task measuring tendency for prosocial behavior. Findings reveal that compared to nonresponders, vicarious pain responders exhibit enhanced empathic accuracy, intensified emotional reactions to others' emotional pain, and a greater motivation to communicate with the target. This study marks the first behavioral evidence showcasing vicarious pain responders' empathic abilities, reactions, and motivation in response to nonphysical pain of others, expanding our knowledge of this phenomenon and its association with broader empathic abilities.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11220461/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141444066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Meijia Li, Min Pu, Qianying Ma, Elien Heleven, Chris Baeken, Kris Baetens, Natacha Deroost, Frank Van Overwalle
{"title":"One step too far: social cerebellum in norm-violating navigation.","authors":"Meijia Li, Min Pu, Qianying Ma, Elien Heleven, Chris Baeken, Kris Baetens, Natacha Deroost, Frank Van Overwalle","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae027","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae027","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social norms are pivotal in guiding social interactions. The current study investigated the potential contribution of the posterior cerebellum, a critical region involved in perceiving and comprehending the sequential dynamics of social actions, in detecting actions that either conform to or deviate from social norms. Participants engaged in a goal-directed task in which they observed others navigating towards a goal. The trajectories demonstrated either norm-violating (trespassing forbidden zones) or norm-following behaviors (avoiding forbidden zones). Results revealed that observing social norm-violating behaviors engaged the bilateral posterior cerebellar Crus 2 and the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) from the mentalizing network, and the parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) to a greater extent than observing norm-following behaviors. These mentalizing regions were also activated when comparing social sequences against non-social and non-sequential control conditions. Reproducing norm-violating social trajectories observed earlier, activated the left cerebellar Crus 2 and the right PHG compared to reproducing norm-following trajectories. These findings illuminate the neural mechanisms in the cerebellum associated with detecting norm transgressions during social navigation, emphasizing the role of the posterior cerebellum in detecting and signaling deviations from anticipated sequences.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11037276/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140295758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}