Antonio De Fano, Patrique Fiedler, Filippo Zappasodi, Maurizio Bertollo, Silvia Comani
{"title":"Non-verbal joint action in healthy adults: a systematic scoping review of EEG-hyperscanning research.","authors":"Antonio De Fano, Patrique Fiedler, Filippo Zappasodi, Maurizio Bertollo, Silvia Comani","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf050","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Using EEG-hyperscanning, neuroscientists showed that non-verbal joint actions are associated with different patterns of interpersonal neural coupling (INC), influenced by factors such as the type of joint action investigated, the experimental task used, and the analytical approach employed. The present systematic scoping review aims to identify the categories of non-verbal joint actions investigated so far, the experimental tasks and INC measures used, and the related main findings to provide a comprehensive overview of the field. Thirty-nintharticles were included in this review. Most studies investigated cooperative and simultaneous joint actions performed with either similar or complementary actions, whereas competitive and turn-based joint actions are under-investigated. Tasks involve interactions mainly based on movement, music, or computer, with movement-based tasks being most relevant to social neuroscience. Several INC approaches were used, with graph theory and phase synchrony being the commonly used. The main findings are organized and discussed according to the analytical approaches used and, for each approach, into groups of joint action categories and tasks. By providing a structured classification of joint action types and highlighting the relationship between tasks and INC methods, this review offers a reference for designing future studies and refining methodological approaches in EEG-hyperscanning research on social interaction.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144033236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effects of Oxytocin on Agency in Anxiously Attached Individuals, a Replication and Extension.","authors":"Jennifer A Bartz, Willis Klein, Amy J P Gregory","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf049","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Oxytocin can promote prosocial behavior but also anti-social effects in anxiously attached individuals. Such individuals desire interpersonal closeness but are preoccupied with abandonment; they also lack agency (self-efficacy, empowerment), possibly because of thwarted attachment needs. By augmenting affiliative strivings, oxytocin may threaten anxiously attached individuals' already fragile sense of agency. Indeed, prior work shows that oxytocin increases communion, especially for avoidant individuals, but decreases agency for anxious individuals. Here, we replicated the oxytocin-avoidance-communion effect (p<.001), with some additional nuance, and the oxytocin-anxiety-agency effect (p=.014) in a larger (N = 77; within-subject), gender diverse sample. We also investigated bodily agency using the rubber hand illusion paradigm. Anxious individuals also evidenced less bodily agency-experiencing greater \"loss of own hand\"-although this was not potentiated by oxytocin. These findings may explain some of oxytocin's divergent social effects and highlight the tension that can arise between meeting needs for communion/security and agency in interpersonally vulnerable individuals.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144049016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Loneliness modulates the neural dynamics of language processing in healthy older adults: evidence from event-related potentials.","authors":"Bing Li, Chih-Mao Huang, Ya-Yi Wang, Qiduo Lin, Hsu-Wen Huang","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf030","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf030","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Loneliness, a distressing emotional response to perceived deficiencies in social interactions, has seen a marked increase in prevalence since the COVID-19 pandemic. While previous research has linked loneliness in older adults to affective disorders and cognitive decline, its impact on language comprehension-a crucial aspect of social interaction-remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by examining the effects of loneliness on semantic retrieval in healthy older adults. Using event-related potentials, we measured participants' neural responses as they verified category membership across three conditions: high typicality, low typicality, and category violations. We found that loneliness was negatively correlated with an N400 amplitude reduction for low-typicality items compared to category violations. Moreover, individuals who reported a high level of loneliness exhibited attenuated and delayed N400 effects within more restricted time windows compared to their less lonely counterparts. These results indicate that loneliness impairs semantic memory retrieval in older adults, potentially compromising language comprehension and further exacerbating social isolation. This research highlights the detrimental impact of loneliness on linguistic abilities, which may contribute to a vicious cycle of increasing social isolation and deepening loneliness.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12060866/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144048927","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":"Loneliness modulates the neural dynamics of language processing in healthy older adults: evidence from event-related potentials.","authors":"Bing Li, Chih-Mao Huang, Ya-Yi Wang, Qiduo Lin, Hsu-Wen Huang","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf030","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Loneliness, a distressing emotional response to perceived deficiencies in social interactions, has seen a marked increase in prevalence since the COVID-19 pandemic. While previous research has linked loneliness in older adults to affective disorders and cognitive decline, its impact on language comprehension-a crucial aspect of social interaction-remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by examining the effects of loneliness on semantic retrieval in healthy older adults. Using event-related potentials, we measured participants' neural responses as they verified category membership across three conditions: high typicality, low typicality, and category violations. We found that loneliness was negatively correlated with an N400 amplitude reduction for low-typicality items compared to category violations. Moreover, individuals who reported a high level of loneliness exhibited attenuated and delayed N400 effects within more restricted time windows compared to their less lonely counterparts. These results indicate that loneliness impairs semantic memory retrieval in older adults, potentially compromising language comprehension and further exacerbating social isolation. This research highlights the detrimental impact of loneliness on linguistic abilities, which may contribute to a vicious cycle of increasing social isolation and deepening loneliness.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Are older adults more deceived by false advertising? Evidence from intra- and inter-brain connectivity in the prefrontal cortex during face-to-face deceptive sales.","authors":"Ying-Chen Liu, Zi-Han Xu, Zhi-Jun Zhan, Zi-Wei Liang, Xue-Rui Peng, Jing Yu","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf044","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Financial fraud through false advertising has become increasingly prevalent among both younger and older adults, yet the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying real-time, face-to-face deceptive sales are unclear. In addition, the effects of guilt appeal as a marketing strategy, across age groups remain unexplored.We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning to examine purchase decisions and neural mechanisms by age group and sales approach (guilt vs. control) in a face-to-face sale mimicking real-life scenarios. Older adults had higher purchase intentions for products promoted by false advertising across sales approaches compared to younger adults. However, younger adults were more likely to be influenced by guilt appeal. The neural results aligned with the behavioral finding that younger adults' intra-brain functional connectivity and inter-brain synchronization values were greater in the guilt condition than in the control, whereas no difference between conditions was found for older adults. Using inter-subject representational similarity analyses, we identified distinct neuropsychological mechanisms between two age groups. Younger adults' frontopolar activity was associated with the advertising credibility, whereas older adults' frontopolar activity was associated with the trustworthiness of the salesperson during deceptive sales. These findings provide insights into age-specific vulnerabilities and may inform tailored consumer fraud prevention strategies targeting younger and older adults separately.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144032996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A beautiful face is good when we're judged by others, a moral character is better.","authors":"Julia Baum, Rasha Abdel Rahman","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae071","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsae071","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Moral beauty, reflected in one's actions, and facial beauty both affect how we are judged. Here, we investigated how moral and facial beauty interact to affect social judgments and emotional responses, employing event-related brain potentials (ERPs). All participants (female) associated positive, neutral, or negative verbal information with faces scoring high or low on attractiveness and performed ratings of the faces as manipulation checks. In a separate test phase, the faces were presented again, and participants made valenced social judgments of the persons. Results show a dominance of moral beauty in valenced social judgments as well as ERPs related to reflexive and evaluative emotional responses (early posterior negativity and late positive potential), whereas facial attractiveness mattered little. In contrast, facial attractiveness affected visual processing (N170). Similarly, relatively shallow impressions of attractiveness and likability that require no knowledge about the person were influenced by both facial attractiveness and social-emotional information. This pattern of dominant effects of social-emotional information regardless of attractiveness shows that when it comes to our emotional responses and social judgments, moral beauty is what matters most, even in the face of physical beauty.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12036660/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142484673","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 beautiful face is good when we're judged by others, a moral character is better.","authors":"Julia Baum, Rasha Abdel Rahman","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsae071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae071","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Moral beauty, reflected in one's actions, and facial beauty both affect how we are judged. Here, we investigated how moral and facial beauty interact to affect social judgments and emotional responses, employing event-related brain potentials (ERPs). All participants (female) associated positive, neutral, or negative verbal information with faces scoring high or low on attractiveness and performed ratings of the faces as manipulation checks. In a separate test phase, the faces were presented again, and participants made valenced social judgments of the persons. Results show a dominance of moral beauty in valenced social judgments as well as ERPs related to reflexive and evaluative emotional responses (early posterior negativity and late positive potential), whereas facial attractiveness mattered little. In contrast, facial attractiveness affected visual processing (N170). Similarly, relatively shallow impressions of attractiveness and likability that require no knowledge about the person were influenced by both facial attractiveness and social-emotional information. This pattern of dominant effects of social-emotional information regardless of attractiveness shows that when it comes to our emotional responses and social judgments, moral beauty is what matters most, even in the face of physical beauty.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Heegyu Kim, Sangyeon Kim, Sung Chan Jun, Chang S Nam
{"title":"Is what I think what you think? Multilayer network-based inter-brain synchrony approach.","authors":"Heegyu Kim, Sangyeon Kim, Sung Chan Jun, Chang S Nam","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf028","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social interaction plays a crucial role in human societies, encompassing complex dynamics among individuals. To understand social interaction at the neural level, researchers have utilized hyperscanning in several social settings. These studies have mainly focused on inter-brain synchrony and the efficiency of paired functional brain networks, examining group interactions in dyads. However, this approach may not fully capture the complexity of multiple interactions, potentially leading to gaps in understanding inter-network differences. To overcome this limitation, the present study aims to bridge this gap by introducing methodological enhancements using the multilayer network approach, which is tailored to extract features from multiple networks. We applied this strategy to analyze the triad condition during social behavior processes to identify group interaction indices. Additionally, to validate our methodology, we compared the multilayer networks of triad conditions with group synchrony to paired conditions without group synchrony, focusing on statistical differences between alpha and beta waves. Correlation analysis between inter-brain and group networks revealed that this methodology accurately reflects the characteristics of actual behavioral synchrony. The findings of our study suggest that measures of paired brain synchrony and group interaction may exhibit distinct trends, offering valuable insights into interpreting group synchrony.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sarah J Dembling, Nicole M Abaya, Peter J Gianaros, Tristen K Inagaki
{"title":"The heart of social pain: examining resting blood pressure and neural sensitivity to exclusion.","authors":"Sarah J Dembling, Nicole M Abaya, Peter J Gianaros, Tristen K Inagaki","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Previous work suggests blood pressure (BP) relates to social algesia, where those with higher BP are more tolerant of social pain. The neural correlates of this association, however, are unknown. Based on findings suggesting neural regions involved in physical pain are activated during social pain, the current study explores whether BP relates to subjective and neural responses to social pain, apart from emotional responding. BP was measured, after which participants completed emotional processing and social exclusion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigms. Results replicated previous findings, with higher systolic BP related to lower trait sensitivity to social pain. However, there were no associations between BP and reported sensitivity to social pain during social exclusion. Moreover, after accounting for adiposity, we found no association between BP and anterior insula (AI) or dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity to exclusion. Finally, there were no reliable associations between BP and reported valence or arousal, or AI and dACC activity to emotional images. Findings partly replicate and extend prior findings on BP and emotional responding to social pain; however, they appear inconsistent with predictions at the neural level. Future experimental manipulation of BP may allow for causal inferences and adjudication of conceptual perspectives on cardiovascular contributions to social algesia.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sarah J Dembling, Nicole M Abaya, Peter J Gianaros, Tristen K Inagaki
{"title":"The heart of social pain: examining resting blood pressure and neural sensitivity to exclusion.","authors":"Sarah J Dembling, Nicole M Abaya, Peter J Gianaros, Tristen K Inagaki","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf025","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Previous work suggests blood pressure (BP) relates to social algesia, where those with higher BP are more tolerant of social pain. The neural correlates of this association, however, are unknown. Based on findings suggesting neural regions involved in physical pain are activated during social pain, the current study explores whether BP relates to subjective and neural responses to social pain, apart from emotional responding. BP was measured, after which participants completed emotional processing and social exclusion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigms. Results replicated previous findings, with higher systolic BP related to lower trait sensitivity to social pain. However, there were no associations between BP and reported sensitivity to social pain during social exclusion. Moreover, after accounting for adiposity, we found no association between BP and anterior insula (AI) or dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity to exclusion. Finally, there were no reliable associations between BP and reported valence or arousal, or AI and dACC activity to emotional images. Findings partly replicate and extend prior findings on BP and emotional responding to social pain; however, they appear inconsistent with predictions at the neural level. Future experimental manipulation of BP may allow for causal inferences and adjudication of conceptual perspectives on cardiovascular contributions to social algesia.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12000721/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143756708","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}