{"title":"Grandmaternal caregiving is associated with a distinct multi-voxel neural representation of grandchildren in the parental motivation circuit.","authors":"Minwoo Lee, Amber Gonzalez, James K Rilling","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf034","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Grandmothers enhance grandchild survival and maternal health through caregiving. Comparative evidence suggests that human grandmotherhood reflects a unique life history strategy promoting the inclusive fitness of post-reproductive females. Despite its evolutionary importance, the proximate neural mechanisms supporting grandmaternal caregiving remain unclear. This study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivariate approaches to investigate how grandmaternal brains encode information about grandchildren and translate it into caregiving. Forty-seven grandmothers (age = 59.1 ± 7 years) completed an fMRI task viewing photos of a grandchild, the grandchild's parent, unfamiliar individuals, and nonhuman objects. Multi-voxel activation patterns associated with these stimuli were analyzed using representational similarity analysis, focusing on the hypothalamic and mesolimbic regions critical for mammalian parenting. Results reveal that grandchildren had the most distinct multi-voxel pattern of activation within these regions, potentially reflecting the grandmothers' motivational readiness to engage in grandmaternal caregiving. Indeed, greater neural dissimilarity between the grandchild and other social categories correlated with higher self-reported affection and supportive behaviors towards grandchildren, particularly in paternal grandmothers. Our findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms of grandmaternal caregiving that enhances inclusive fitness.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129973","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":"Grandmaternal caregiving is associated with a distinct multi-voxel neural representation of grandchildren in the parental motivation circuit.","authors":"Minwoo Lee, Amber Gonzalez, James K Rilling","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf034","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf034","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Grandmothers enhance grandchild survival and maternal health through caregiving. Comparative evidence suggests that human grandmotherhood reflects a unique life history strategy promoting the inclusive fitness of post-reproductive females. Despite its evolutionary importance, the proximate neural mechanisms supporting grandmaternal caregiving remain unclear. This study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivariate approaches to investigate how grandmaternal brains encode information about grandchildren and translate it into caregiving. Forty-seven grandmothers (age = 59.1 ± 7 years) completed an fMRI task viewing photos of a grandchild, the grandchild's parent, unfamiliar individuals, and nonhuman objects. Multi-voxel activation patterns associated with these stimuli were analyzed using representational similarity analysis, focusing on the hypothalamic and mesolimbic regions critical for mammalian parenting. Results reveal that grandchildren had the most distinct multi-voxel pattern of activation within these regions, potentially reflecting the grandmothers' motivational readiness to engage in grandmaternal caregiving. Indeed, greater neural dissimilarity between the grandchild and other social categories correlated with higher self-reported affection and supportive behaviors towards grandchildren, particularly in paternal grandmothers. Our findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms of grandmaternal caregiving that enhances inclusive fitness.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12077294/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144013605","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":"Neural representations in MPFC and insula encode individual differences in estimating others' preferences.","authors":"Hyeran Kang, Kun Il Kim, Jinhee Kim, Hackjin Kim","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf051","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf051","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In human society, successful social interactions often hinge upon the ability to accurately estimate other's perspectives, a skill that necessitates integrating contextual cues. This study investigates the neural mechanism involved in this capacity through a preference estimation task. In this task, participants were presented with the target's face and asked to predict their preference for a given item. Preference estimation accuracy was assessed by calculating the percentage of correct guesses, where participants' responses matched the target's preferences on a 4-point Likert scale. Our research demonstrates that, based on inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA), the multi-voxel patterns in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the anterior insula (AI) predict individual differences in preference estimation accuracy. Specifically, the varying behavioral tendencies among participants in inferring others' preferences were mirrored in the multivariate neural representations within these regions, both of which are known for their involvement in individual differences in interoception and context-dependent interpretation of ambiguous facial emotion. These findings suggest that mPFC and AI play pivotal roles in accurately estimating others' preferences based on minimal information and provide insights that transcend the limitations of traditional univariate approaches by employing multivariate pattern analysis.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12380472/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144036350","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":"Priority of spontaneous gender categorization of same-sex faces in young adults.","authors":"Huang Zheng, Shihui Han","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf033","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf033","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To cluster others into male and female groups during face perception is pivotal for appropriate social behaviours. What remains unclear is whether gender categorization of faces is mediated by the same pattern of cognitive and neural processes in women and men. The perception bias hypothesis predicts earlier gender categorization of female (vs. male) faces regardless of an observer's gender. In contrast, the social task demand hypothesis predicts earlier gender categorization of faces that are of the same (vs. different) sex of an observer. We tested these predictions by recording electroencephalography signals to faces of one gender presented in a repetition condition and to both female and male faces in an alternating condition. The neural processes underlying gender categorization were assessed by quantifying repetition suppression of brain activities to faces in the repetition relative to alternating conditions. We found significant repetition suppression of a positive frontal-central activity at 170-210 ms after face onset (the P2 component) to female (but not to male) faces in women. However, repetition suppression of the P2 amplitude occurred to male (but not to female) faces in men. Our findings suggest that observers' genders are pivotal for prioritization of gender categorization of male or female faces in young adults.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12068198/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144001144","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":"Priority of spontaneous gender categorization of same-sex faces in young adults.","authors":"Huang Zheng, Shihui Han","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf033","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To cluster others into male and female groups during face perception is pivotal for appropriate social behaviours. What remains unclear is whether gender categorization of faces is mediated by the same pattern of cognitive and neural processes in women and men. The perception bias hypothesis predicts earlier gender categorization of female (vs. male) faces regardless of an observer's gender. In contrast, the social task demand hypothesis predicts earlier gender categorization of faces that are of the same (vs. different) sex of an observer. We tested these predictions by recording electroencephalography signals to faces of one gender presented in a repetition condition and to both female and male faces in an alternating condition. The neural processes underlying gender categorization were assessed by quantifying repetition suppression of brain activities to faces in the repetition relative to alternating conditions. We found significant repetition suppression of a positive frontal-central activity at 170-210 ms after face onset (the P2 component) to female (but not to male) faces in women. However, repetition suppression of the P2 amplitude occurred to male (but not to female) faces in men. Our findings suggest that observers' genders are pivotal for prioritization of gender categorization of male or female faces in young adults.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129402","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}
V Nicolardi, M P Lisi, M Mello, M Fusaro, G Tieri, S M Aglioti
{"title":"Taking an embodied avatar's perspective modulates the temporal dynamics of vicarious pain and pleasure: a virtual reality and EEG study.","authors":"V Nicolardi, M P Lisi, M Mello, M Fusaro, G Tieri, S M Aglioti","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Observing negative and positive valence virtual stimuli can influence the onlookers' subjective and brain reactivity. However, the relationship between vicarious experiences, observer's perspective-taking, and cerebral activity remains underexplored. To address this gap, we asked 24 healthy participants to passively observe pleasant, painful, and neutral stimuli delivered to a virtual hand seen from a first-person (1PP) or third-person perspective (3PP) while undergoing time and time-frequency EEG recording. Participants reported a stronger sense of ownership over the virtual hand seen from a 1PP, rated pain and touch valence appropriately, and more intense than the neutral ones. Distinct EEG patterns emerged across early (N2, early posterior negativity, EPN), late (late positive potential, LPP) event-related potentials, and EEG power. The N2 and EPN components showed greater amplitudes for pain and pleasure than neutral stimuli, particularly in 1PP. The LPP component exhibited lower amplitudes for pleasure than pain and neutral stimuli. Furthermore, theta-band power increased, and alpha power decreased for pain and pleasure stimuli viewed from a 1PP vs. 3PP perspective. In the ultra-late time window, we observed decreased theta, alpha, and beta-band power specifically associated with pleasure stimuli. Our study provides novel evidence that perspective-taking modulates the temporal dynamics of vicarious pain and pleasure.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129745","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}
V Nicolardi, M P Lisi, M Mello, M Fusaro, G Tieri, S M Aglioti
{"title":"Taking an embodied avatar's perspective modulates the temporal dynamics of vicarious pain and pleasure: a virtual reality and EEG study.","authors":"V Nicolardi, M P Lisi, M Mello, M Fusaro, G Tieri, S M Aglioti","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf035","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Observing negative and positive valence virtual stimuli can influence the onlookers' subjective and brain reactivity. However, the relationship between vicarious experiences, observer's perspective-taking, and cerebral activity remains underexplored. To address this gap, we asked 24 healthy participants to passively observe pleasant, painful, and neutral stimuli delivered to a virtual hand seen from a first-person (1PP) or third-person perspective (3PP) while undergoing time and time-frequency EEG recording. Participants reported a stronger sense of ownership over the virtual hand seen from a 1PP, rated pain and touch valence appropriately, and more intense than the neutral ones. Distinct EEG patterns emerged across early (N2, early posterior negativity, EPN), late (late positive potential, LPP) event-related potentials, and EEG power. The N2 and EPN components showed greater amplitudes for pain and pleasure than neutral stimuli, particularly in 1PP. The LPP component exhibited lower amplitudes for pleasure than pain and neutral stimuli. Furthermore, theta-band power increased, and alpha power decreased for pain and pleasure stimuli viewed from a 1PP vs. 3PP perspective. In the ultra-late time window, we observed decreased theta, alpha, and beta-band power specifically associated with pleasure stimuli. Our study provides novel evidence that perspective-taking modulates the temporal dynamics of vicarious pain and pleasure.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12068220/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144029313","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":"The influence of gender stereotypical primes on the neural processing of words and faces.","authors":"Luana Serafini, Francesca Pesciarelli","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf031","DOIUrl":"10.1093/scan/nsaf031","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Implicit and automatic gender stereotyping and its neural correlates have been extensively investigated in language. This study aimed to extend this investigation to human face processing. We recorded response times (RTs) and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to a target third-person singular pronoun (lui 'he' or lei 'she') or face (male, female), preceded by grammatically marked or stereotypically associated words (e.g. laureata 'graduated', badante 'caregiver'). Participants gender-categorized the target pronoun or face. The RTs showed a priming effect for the grammatical condition for pronouns and both grammatical and stereotypical conditions for faces. At the ERP level, feminine pronouns elicited a larger P300 and LPP (limited to men) when preceded by grammatically masculine than feminine primes. Faces elicited a larger N400, P300, and LPP (limited to women for female faces) when preceded by grammatically gender-incongruent than -congruent primes. Critically, faces showed an ERP gender stereotype asymmetry: larger N400 to male faces, and larger P300 to female faces, when preceded by stereotypically gender-incongruent than -congruent primes. This study shows that faces are influenced by gender stereotypes similarly and more strongly than linguistic stimuli. Given the multidimensionality of faces, this study is a gate-opener for future studies on the interplay between different stereotypes.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12068222/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144056985","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":"The influence of gender stereotypical primes on the neural processing of words and faces.","authors":"Luana Serafini, Francesca Pesciarelli","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf031","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Implicit and automatic gender stereotyping and its neural correlates have been extensively investigated in language. This study aimed to extend this investigation to human face processing. We recorded response times (RTs) and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to a target third-person singular pronoun (lui 'he' or lei 'she') or face (male, female), preceded by grammatically marked or stereotypically associated words (e.g. laureata 'graduated', badante 'caregiver'). Participants gender-categorized the target pronoun or face. The RTs showed a priming effect for the grammatical condition for pronouns and both grammatical and stereotypical conditions for faces. At the ERP level, feminine pronouns elicited a larger P300 and LPP (limited to men) when preceded by grammatically masculine than feminine primes. Faces elicited a larger N400, P300, and LPP (limited to women for female faces) when preceded by grammatically gender-incongruent than -congruent primes. Critically, faces showed an ERP gender stereotype asymmetry: larger N400 to male faces, and larger P300 to female faces, when preceded by stereotypically gender-incongruent than -congruent primes. This study shows that faces are influenced by gender stereotypes similarly and more strongly than linguistic stimuli. Given the multidimensionality of faces, this study is a gate-opener for future studies on the interplay between different stereotypes.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129789","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}
Camilla van Geen, Michael S Cohen, Karolina M Lempert, Kameron A MacNear, Frances M Reckers, Laura Zaneski, David A Wolk, Joseph W Kable
{"title":"Age-related differences in trust decisions: when memory fails and appearances prevail.","authors":"Camilla van Geen, Michael S Cohen, Karolina M Lempert, Kameron A MacNear, Frances M Reckers, Laura Zaneski, David A Wolk, Joseph W Kable","doi":"10.1093/scan/nsaf032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf032","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Older adults are frequent victims of scams, possibly due to biases in how they decide whom to trust. Indeed, older adults' decisions are more likely to be influenced by how generous a person looks and less so by their memory for how this person behaved. Here, we leverage functional magnetic resonance imaging data to clarify the mechanism by which this age-dependent difference emerges. Eighty-six participants learned how much of a $10 endowment an individual shared in a dictator game, and then made decisions about whom to play another round with. As we hypothesized, older adults did not reliably prefer to re-engage with people who had proven themselves to be generous. This bias was driven by a combination of worse associative memory for how much each person shared, linked to decreased medial temporal lobe activity during encoding, and decreased inhibition of irrelevant facial features, linked to reduced activity in the inferior frontal gyrus. Taken together, our findings highlight 'age-related differences' in the ability to both encode relevant information and adaptively deploy it in service of social decisions.</p>","PeriodicalId":94208,"journal":{"name":"Social cognitive and affective neuroscience","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144129868","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}