{"title":"Altered default-mode and frontal-parietal network pattern underlie adaptiveness of emotion regulation flexibility following task-switch training.","authors":"Wei Gao, Bharat Biswal, Xinqi Zhou, Zhibing Xiao, Jiemin Yang, Yanping Li, JiaJin Yuan","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae077","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae077","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emotion regulation flexibility (ERF) refers to one's ability to respond flexibly in complex environments. Adaptiveness of ERF has been associated with cognitive flexibility, which can be improved by task-switching training. However, the impact of task-switching training on ERF and its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. To address this issue, we examined the effects of training on individuals' adaptiveness of ERF by assessing altered brain network patterns. Two groups of participants completed behavioral experiments and resting-state fMRI before and after training. Behavioral results showed higher adaptiveness scores and network analysis observed a higher number of connectivity edges, in the training group compared to the control group. Moreover, we found decreased connectivity strength within the default mode network (DMN) and increased connectivity strength within the frontoparietal network (FPN) in the training group. Furthermore, the task-switch training also led to decreased DMN-FPN interconnectivity, which was significantly correlated to increased adaptiveness of ERF scores. These findings suggest that the adaptiveness of ERF can be supported by altered patterns with the brain network through task-switch training, especially the increased network segregation between the DMN and FPN.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11642612/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142690183","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}
Gaelle E Doucet, Jordanna A Kruse, Ahrianna Keefe, Danielle L Rice, Anna T Coutant, Haley Pulliam, OgheneTejiri V Smith, Vince D Calhoun, Julia M Stephen, Yu-Ping Wang, Stuart F White, Giorgia Picci, Brittany K Taylor, Tony W Wilson
{"title":"Anxiety symptoms are differentially associated with facial expression processing in boys and girls.","authors":"Gaelle E Doucet, Jordanna A Kruse, Ahrianna Keefe, Danielle L Rice, Anna T Coutant, Haley Pulliam, OgheneTejiri V Smith, Vince D Calhoun, Julia M Stephen, Yu-Ping Wang, Stuart F White, Giorgia Picci, Brittany K Taylor, Tony W Wilson","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae085","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae085","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Facial expressions convey important social information and can initiate behavioral change through the processing and understanding of emotions. However, while this ability is known to evolve throughout development, it remains unclear whether this ability differs between girls and boys or how other variables such as level of anxiety can modulate it. Furthermore, understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of facial expression processing and how they are linked by sex and anxiety during development is essential, as alterations in this processing have been associated with psychiatric disorders. Herein, 191 typically developing youth (6- to 15-years old) completed an implicit face processing task involving three facial expressions (angry, happy, and neutral) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We conducted linear models on the fMRI data to investigate the impact sex and anxiety on brain responses to emotional faces, accounting for age. Our findings indicated a significant anxiety-by-sex interaction in a posterior network covering bilateral visual and medial temporal cortices during the happy > neutral contrast. Specifically, girls with higher anxiety showed weaker activation while boys showed the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that the inter-subject variability reported in typically developing individuals in response to facial emotions may be related to many factors, including sex and anxiety level.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11631531/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142717802","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}
Heather J Ferguson, Martina De Lillo, Camilla Woodrow-Hill, Rebecca Foley, Elisabeth E F Bradford
{"title":"Neural empathy mechanisms are shared for physical and social pain, and increase from adolescence to older adulthood.","authors":"Heather J Ferguson, Martina De Lillo, Camilla Woodrow-Hill, Rebecca Foley, Elisabeth E F Bradford","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae080","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae080","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Empathy is a critical component of social interaction that enables individuals to understand and share the emotions of others. We report a preregistered experiment in which 240 participants, including adolescents, young adults, and older adults, viewed images depicting hands and feet in physically or socially painful situations (versus nonpainful). Empathy was measured using imagined pain ratings and EEG mu suppression. Imagined pain was greater for physical versus social pain, with young adults showing particular sensitivity to social pain events compared to adolescents and older adults. Mu desynchronization was greater to pain versus no-pain situations, but the physical/social context did not modulate pain responses. Brain responses to painful situations increased linearly from adolescence to young and older adulthood. These findings highlight shared activity across the core empathy network for both physical and social pain contexts, and an empathic response that develops over the lifespan with accumulating social experience.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11630255/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142570815","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":"Pain modulates brain potentials and behavioral responses to unfairness.","authors":"Chunling Hu, Ruoxi Wu, Chenbo Wang","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae081","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae081","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Pain may initially contribute to the evolution of moral decision-making as it elicits avoidance behavior. The current study aims to support this perspective by conducting a behavioral study to investigate whether pain leads to a self-oriented tendency and an exploratory electroencephalogram (EEG) study to examine how pain affects moral decision-making. In Experiment 1, 34 participants were recruited and treated with both capsaicin (pain condition) and hand cream (control condition) in separate days. After treatment, they were asked to complete a third-party punishment task. Results showed that pain increased punishment and decreased compensation towards unfair allocations in the task. In Experiment 2, 68 participants with either pain or control treatment participated in an EEG experiment. It revealed that pain enlarged the disparity of late positive potential (LPP) between fair and unfair situations, suggesting that individuals in pain may exert more cognitive effort when facing unfair allocations. Meanwhile, pain did not affect the early components P2 and the medial frontal negativity, indicating unaffected attentional or anticipatory responses toward unfairness. It demonstrates that pain can effectively modulate responses to unfairness, manifesting as a self-oriented approach with negative consequences for others. It suggests a potential evolutionary impact of pain on moral decisions.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11630317/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142607844","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":"Empathy enhances decoding accuracy of human neurophysiological responses to emotional facial expressions of humans and dogs.","authors":"Miiamaaria V Kujala, Lauri Parkkonen, Jan Kujala","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae082","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae082","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite the growing interest in the nonhuman animal emotionality, we currently know little about the human brain processing of nonconspecific emotional expressions. Here, we characterized the millisecond-scale temporal dynamics of human brain responses to conspecific human and nonconspecific canine emotional facial expressions. Our results revealed generally similar cortical responses to human and dog facial expressions in the occipital cortex during the first 500 ms, temporal cortex at 100-500 ms and parietal cortex at 150-350 ms from the stimulus onset. Responses to dog faces were pronounced at the latencies in temporal cortices corresponding to the time windows of early posterior negativity and late posterior positivity, suggesting attentional engagement to emotionally salient stimuli. We also utilized support vector machine-based classifiers to discriminate between the brain responses to different images. The subject trait-level empathy correlated with the accuracy of classifying the brain responses of aggressive from happy dog faces and happy from neutral human faces. This result likely reflects the attentional enhancement provoked by the subjective ecological salience of the stimuli.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11587893/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142607842","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":"A preliminary study of threat-anticipatory responding in Latina youth: associations with age, anxiety, and cortical thickness.","authors":"Jordan L Mullins, Rany Abend, Kalina J Michalska","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae065","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae065","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Variation in prefrontal cortex neuroanatomy has been previously associated with elevated physiological responses to anticipated aversive events. The extent to which such associations extend beyond the specific ecology of treatment-seeking youth from upper-middle socioeconomic backgrounds is unknown. The current study tests the replicability of neuroanatomical correlates of anticipatory responding and the moderating roles of age and anxiety severity in a community sample of Latina girls, a historically underrepresented group exhibiting high levels of untreated anxiety. Forty pre-adolescent Latina girls (MAge = 10.01, s.d. = 1.25, range = 8-12 years) completed a structural magnetic resonance imaging scan. Participants also completed a differential threat and safety learning paradigm, during which skin conductance and subjective fear responding were assessed. Anxiety severity was assessed via the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex thickness was associated with reduced physiological responsivity to anticipated threat. Age- and anxiety-dependent associations emerged between dorsomedial prefrontal cortex thickness and individual differences in subjective fear responding to anticipated threat. This preliminary study extends work on neuroanatomical contributions to physiological threat responsivity to a community sample of Latina youth and highlights potential considerations for early identification efforts in this population when threat neurocircuitry is still developing.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11576357/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142678143","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":"Association of neuroimaging measures with facial emotional processing in healthy adults: a task fMRI study.","authors":"Gantian Huang, Chen Qiu, Meng Liao, Qiyong Gong, Longqian Liu, Ping Jiang","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae076","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae076","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Investigating the neural processing of emotion-related neural circuits underlying emotional facial processing may help in understanding mental disorders. We used two subscales of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) to assess the emotional cognitive of 25 healthy participants. A higher score indicates greater difficulty in emotional perception. In addition, participants completed a n-back task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psychophysiological interaction analysis was used to explore the functional connectivity (FC) of neural circuits. Next, we used elastic-net regression analysis for feature selection and conducted correlation analysis between the neuroimaging measures and questionnaire scores. Following a 3-fold cross-validation, five neuroimaging measures emerged as significant features. Results of correlation analysis demonstrated that participants with higher TAS scores exhibited increased FC between the amygdala and occipital face area during facial stimulus processing, but decreased connectivity during emotional processing. These findings suggested that individuals with poor emotional recognition exhibited increased connectivity among face-related brain regions during facial processing. However, during emotional processing, decreasing neural synchronization among neural circuits involved in emotional processing affects facial expression processing. These findings suggest potential neural marker related to subjective emotional perception, which may contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of emotional dysregulation in individuals with psychiatric conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11570540/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142484674","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}
Jolien Trekels, Maria T Maza, Jimmy Capella, Nathan A Jorgensen, Seh-Joo Kwon, Kristen A Lindquist, Mitchell J Prinstein, Eva H Telzer
{"title":"Diverse social media experiences and adolescents' depressive symptoms: the moderating role of neurobiological responsivity to rejected peers.","authors":"Jolien Trekels, Maria T Maza, Jimmy Capella, Nathan A Jorgensen, Seh-Joo Kwon, Kristen A Lindquist, Mitchell J Prinstein, Eva H Telzer","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae070","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae070","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Adolescents' experiences with social media are complex and can impact their mental well-being differently. Our study aimed to understand how neurobiological sensitivities may moderate the association between different social media experiences and depressive symptoms. In a multiwave study, 80 adolescents (Mage = 13.06, SD = 0.58) took part in an functional magnetic resonance imaging task designed to gauge the neural responses when viewing accepted and rejected peers within their own social networks (Wave 1). We also collected self-reported measures of positive (digital social connection) and negative (digital pressure) experiences on social media and depressive symptoms (Waves 2 and 3). Our findings revealed that there were no significant associations between digital social connection, digital pressure, and depressive symptoms 1 year later. However, the association between digital social connection and depressive symptoms was moderated by neural responsivity. Specifically, for adolescents with reduced sensitivity to their rejected peers in the ventral striatum, right temporoparietal junction, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, digital social connection was associated with reduced depressive symptoms 1 year later. These results emphasize the importance of individual differences in how adolescents' brains respond to rejected peers in shaping the impact of online experiences on their mental well-being.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11568452/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142484677","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}
Rotem Dan, Aliza R Brown, Lauren Hutson, Emily L Belleau, Shiba M Esfand, Valerie Ruberto, Emily Johns, Kaylee E Null, Fei Du, Diego A Pizzagalli
{"title":"Brain encoding during perceived control as a prospective predictor of improvement in quality of life.","authors":"Rotem Dan, Aliza R Brown, Lauren Hutson, Emily L Belleau, Shiba M Esfand, Valerie Ruberto, Emily Johns, Kaylee E Null, Fei Du, Diego A Pizzagalli","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae075","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae075","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Perceived control is strongly related to mental health and well-being. Specifically, lack of perceived control has been associated with learned helplessness and stress-related disorders, such as depression and anxiety. However, it is unknown whether brain activation to control and its protective effect against stress can predict changes in quality of life. To address this gap, we examined the neural underpinning of controllability in healthy females (N = 40) performing the Value of Control task in an functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Quality of life and perceived stress were assessed at baseline and 6-month follow-up. Increased brain activation for control was found within the putamen, insula, thalamus, mid-cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, motor cortex, and cerebellum. In contrast, increased brain activation for lack of control was found within the posterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices. In an exploratory analysis, an elastic-net algorithm was used to identify brain predictors of quality of life 6 months later. The right putamen's activation to control was selected as the best prospective predictor of improvement in life enjoyment and satisfaction and this association was mediated by changes in perceived stress. Our findings suggest that neural responsiveness to control may have utility as a potential marker of quality of life and resilience to adversity.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11556337/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142484675","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}
Sunghyun H Hong, Felicia A Hardi, Scott Tillem, Leigh G Goetschius, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Vonnie McLoyd, Nestor L Lopez-Duran, Colter Mitchell, Luke W Hyde, Christopher S Monk
{"title":"Mother-child closeness and adolescent structural neural networks: a prospective longitudinal study of low-income families.","authors":"Sunghyun H Hong, Felicia A Hardi, Scott Tillem, Leigh G Goetschius, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Vonnie McLoyd, Nestor L Lopez-Duran, Colter Mitchell, Luke W Hyde, Christopher S Monk","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae083","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae083","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mother-child closeness, a mutually trusting and affectionate bond, is an important factor in shaping positive youth development. However, little is known about the neural pathways through which mother-child closeness is related to brain organization. Utilizing a longitudinal sample primarily from low-income families (N = 181; 76% African American youth and 54% female), this study investigated the associations between mother-child closeness at ages 9 and 15 years and structural connectivity organization (network integration, robustness, and segregation) at age 15 years. The assessment of mother-child closeness included perspectives from both mother and child. The results revealed that greater mother-child closeness is linked with increased global efficiency and transitivity, but not with modularity. Specifically, both the mother's and child's reports of closeness at age 15 years predicted network metrics, but report at age 9 years did not. Our findings suggest that mother-child closeness is associated with neural white matter organization, as adolescents who experienced greater mother-child closeness displayed topological properties indicative of more integrated and robust structural networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11631430/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142607843","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}