Relevance to self: A brief review and framework of neural systems underlying appraisal

Neuropsychopharmacological aesthetics: A theoretical consideration of pharmacological approaches to causative brain study in aesthetics and art

Recent developments in neuroaesthetics have heightened the need for causative approaches to more deeply understand the mechanism underlying perception, emotion, and aesthetic experiences. This has recently been the topic for empirical work, employing several causative methods for changing brain activity, as well as comparative assessments of individuals with brain damage or disease. However, one area of study with high potential, and indeed a long history of often nonscientific use in the area of aesthetics and art, employing psychopharmacological chemicals as means of changing brain function, has not been systematically utilized. This chapter reviews the literature on this topic, analyzing neuroendocrinological (neurochemical) approaches and mechanisms that might be used to causatively study the aesthetic brain. We focus on four relevant neuromodulatory systems potentially related to aesthetic experience: the dopaminergic, serotonergic, cannabinoid, and the opioidergic system. We build a bridge to psychopharmacological methods and review drug-induced behavioral and neurobiological consequences. We conclude with a discussion of hypotheses and suggestions for future research.

The Self-Reference Effect on Perception: Undiminished in Adults with Autism and No Relation to Autism Traits

Memory for (and perception of) information about the self is superior to memory for (and perception of) other kinds of information. This self-reference effect (SRE) in memory appears diminished in ASD and related to the number of ASD traits manifested by neurotypical individuals (fewer traits = larger SRE). Here, we report the first experiments exploring the relation between ASD and the SRE in perception. Using a "Shapes" Task (Sui et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1105, 2012), participants learned to associate three different shapes (triangle, circle, square) with three different labels representing self, a familiar other, or an unfamiliar other (e.g., "you", "mother", "stranger"). Participants then completed trials during which they were presented with one shape and one label for 100 ms, and made judgments about whether the shape and label was a match. In Experiment 1, neurotypical participants (n = 124) showed the expected SRE, detecting self-related matches more reliably and quickly than matches involving familiar or unfamiliar other. Most important, number of ASD traits was unrelated to the size of the SRE for either accuracy or RT. Bayesian association analyses strongly supported the null hypothesis. In Experiment 2, there were no differences between 22 adults with ASD and 21 matched comparison adults in performance on the Shapes Task. Despite showing large and significant theory of mind impairments, participants with ASD showed the typical SRE and there were no associations with ASD traits in either group. In every case, Bayesian analyses favored the null hypothesis. These findings challenge theories about self-representation in ASD, as discussed in the article. Autism Res 2018, 11: 331-341. © 2017 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

LAY SUMMARY

Neurotypical people tend to find it easier to perceive and remember information that relates to themselves than information that relates to others. Research suggests that people with ASD show a diminished (or absent) self-bias in memory and that severity of ASD predicts the extent of this diminution (more severe ASD = smaller self-bias in memory). However, the current research suggests strongly that people with ASD do show a self-bias in their perception. This research informs our understanding of psychological functioning in ASD and challenges theories regarding self-awareness in this disorder.

The neural signature of self-concept development in adolescence: The role of domain and valence distinctions

Neuroimaging studies in adults showed that cortical midline regions including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) are important in self-evaluations. The goals of this study were to investigate the contribution of these regions to self-evaluations in late childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, and to examine whether these differed per domain (academic, physical and prosocial) and valence (positive versus negative). Also, we tested whether this activation changes across adolescence. For this purpose, participants between ages 11–21-years (N = 150) evaluated themselves on trait sentences in an fMRI session. Behaviorally, adolescents rated their academic traits less positively than children and young adults. The neural analyses showed that evaluating self-traits versus a control condition was associated with increased activity in mPFC (domain-general effect), and positive traits were associated with increased activity in ventral mPFC (valence effect). Self-related mPFC activation increased linearly with age, but only for evaluating physical traits. Furthermore, an adolescent-specific decrease in striatum activation for positive self traits was found. Finally, we found domain-specific neural activity for evaluating traits in physical (dorsolateral PFC, dorsal mPFC) and academic (PPC) domains. Together, these results highlight the importance of domain distinctions when studying self-concept development in late childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.

Aberrant modulation of brain activation by emotional valence during self-referential processing among patients with delusions of reference

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Delusions of reference are thought to reflect abnormally heightened attributions of salience to mundane events or stimuli that lead to convictions that they are personally significant or directed at the observer. Recent findings highlight abnormal recruitment of brain regions associated with self-referential processes among patients with referential delusions. Given the inherent overlap of emotion, incentive salience, and self-relevance, as well as with aberrant thought processes in psychosis, this study investigated the implicit relations between participants' perception of the emotional valence of stimuli on neural correlates of self-referent judgments among schizophrenia-spectrum patients with referential delusions.

METHODS

During fMRI scanning, participants indicated whether sentences describing personal characteristics seemed to refer specifically to them. Subsequently, participants rated their perceived emotional valence of each statement.

RESULTS

Regression analyses revealed differential relations between groups across regions associated with self-referential processing, including prefrontal regions, anterior cingulate, insula, precuneus, and dorsal striatum. Within these regions, greater activation related to sentences rated as more positive among healthy comparison participants and more negative among patients.

LIMITATIONS

The current results warrant replication and extension with larger and longitudinal samples to assess potential moderating relations of clinical and demographic individual differences.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings support aberrant brain activation associated with emotional and salience brain networks in schizophrenia and highlight the importance of considering specific emotional attributes (valence) in discrete domains of delusional thought (self-referential communication).

Health Risk Perception and Risk Communication

Risk perceptions are a prerequisite for protective action. Both scientists and practitioners need to understand the multifaceted nature of health risk perception and risk communication. This article reviews insights from psychophysiological research, with a focus on neuroscientific approaches that examine the biological basis of risk perception in the brain and capture the brain response to health and risk messages. Specifically, we discuss the key role of intuitive processes for personal risk perception and the difference between absolute and comparative risk. We then describe the relationship between risk perception and health behavior change and present recent work that measures responses to health prevention messages. Finally, we discuss implications for translation to public health policy and point to needs for future research. A better understanding of the biological roots of personal risk perception and how these can be addressed via risk communication informs policymakers in designing effective public health interventions.

Does change in self-perceived problem drinker identity relate to change in alcohol use? An examination of nontreatment seeking hazardous drinkers

Identity change is related to reductions in alcohol use among treatment seekers, but it is unclear the extent to which identity change is associated with reductions in alcohol use among nontreatment seeking hazardous drinkers. The goal of the current study was to examine whether change in problem drinker identity (i.e., self-reported identification as a problem or nonproblem drinker) was associated with reductions in heavy drinking among nontreatment seeking hazardous drinkers. Participants (n = 149) completed measures to assess alcohol use and were asked if they identified as a problem drinker at baseline and at 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-month follow-ups. Two groups were compared: (a) those who identified as a problem drinker at baseline but identified as a nonproblem drinker at 12 months and (b) those who did not make the same transition. Latent mixture modeling was conducted to examine whether change in problem drinker identity was predictive of heavy drinking latent class growth trajectories. The results indicated that a self-reported transition from identification as a problem drinker to identification as a nonproblem drinker was associated with greater reductions in heavy drinking over the assessment period and a 7 times greater likelihood of being in a rapidly decreasing heavy drinking latent trajectory class compared with participants who did not make the same transition. Self-reported transitions in identity appear to be a good predictor of heavy drinking trajectories among nontreatment seekers. A better understanding of what predicts transitions in drinking identity among non-treatment and treatment seekers is needed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Regional gray matter correlates of memory for emotion-laden words in middle-aged and older adults: A voxel-based morphometry study

Emotional content is known to enhance memory in a content-dependent manner in healthy populations. In middle-aged and older adults, a reduced preference for negative material, or even an enhanced preference for positive material has been observed. This preference seems to be modulated by the emotional arousal that the material evokes. The neuroanatomical basis for emotional memory processes is, however, not well understood in middle-aged and older healthy people. Previous research on local gray matter correlates of emotional memory in older populations has mainly been conducted with patients suffering from various neurodegenerative diseases. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine regional gray matter correlates of immediate free recall and recognition memory of intentionally encoded positive, negative, and emotionally neutral words using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in a sample of 50-to-79-year-old cognitively intact normal adults. The behavioral analyses yielded a positivity bias in recognition memory, but not in immediate free recall. No associations with memory performance emerged from the region-of-interest (ROI) analyses using amygdalar and hippocampal volumes. Controlling for total intracranial volume, age, and gender, the whole-brain VBM analyses showed statistically significant associations between immediate free recall of negative words and volumes in various frontal regions, between immediate free recall of positive words and cerebellar volume, and between recognition memory of positive words and primary visual cortex volume. The findings indicate that the neural areas subserving memory for emotion-laden information encompass posterior brain areas, including the cerebellum, and that memory for emotion-laden information may be driven by cognitive control functions.

Deviant functional activation and connectivity of the right insula are associated with lack of awareness of episodic memory impairment in nonamnesic alcoholism

A disorder of metamemory, expressed as unawareness of mnemonic ability, is typically associated with the profound amnesia of Korsakoff's Syndrome (KS). A similar but less severe type of limited awareness can also occur in non-KS alcoholism and is observed as an impairment in generating Feeling-of-Knowing (FOK) predictions about future recognition performance. We previously found that FOK accuracy was selectively related to volumes of the insula in alcoholics involved in the present study. Unknown, however, are the neural substrates of unawareness of memory impairment in alcoholism. A task-activated fMRI paradigm served to identify neural nodes and networks implicated in inaccurate self-estimation of mnemonic ability in sober alcoholics while they made prospective FOK judgments in an episodic memory paradigm. Lower activation in the right insula correlated with greater overestimations of future memory abilities in alcoholics. Weaker connectivity of the right insula with the left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a node of the salience network, and stronger connectivity of the right insula with the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a node of the default mode network (DMN), co-occurred in alcoholics relative to the controls. Specifically, alcoholics, who failed to desynchronize insula-vmPFC activity, had greater overestimation of their memory predictions and poorer recognition performance. This study provides novel support that deviant functional activation and connectivity involving the right insula, a hub of the salience network, appears to participate in disrupting metamemory functioning in alcoholics. Compromised FOK performance might result from disturbance of the switching mechanism between brain networks serving self-referential processes (i.e., DMN network) and networks serving externally-driven activities like memory monitoring (i.e., fronto-parietal network). Thus, compromise in insular network coupling could be a neural mechanism underlying anosognosia for subtle mnemonic impairment in nonamnesic alcoholism.

Self-evaluation of decision-making: A general Bayesian framework for metacognitive computation

People are often aware of their mistakes, and report levels of confidence in their choices that correlate with objective performance. These metacognitive assessments of decision quality are important for the guidance of behavior, particularly when external feedback is absent or sporadic. However, a computational framework that accounts for both confidence and error detection is lacking. In addition, accounts of dissociations between performance and metacognition have often relied on ad hoc assumptions, precluding a unified account of intact and impaired self-evaluation. Here we present a general Bayesian framework in which self-evaluation is cast as a "second-order" inference on a coupled but distinct decision system, computationally equivalent to inferring the performance of another actor. Second-order computation may ensue whenever there is a separation between internal states supporting decisions and confidence estimates over space and/or time. We contrast second-order computation against simpler first-order models in which the same internal state supports both decisions and confidence estimates. Through simulations we show that second-order computation provides a unified account of different types of self-evaluation often considered in separate literatures, such as confidence and error detection, and generates novel predictions about the contribution of one's own actions to metacognitive judgments. In addition, the model provides insight into why subjects' metacognition may sometimes be better or worse than task performance. We suggest that second-order computation may underpin self-evaluative judgments across a range of domains. (PsycINFO Database Record

Predicting behavior change from persuasive messages using neural representational similarity and social network analyses

Neural activity in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), identified as engaging in self-related processing, predicts later health behavior change. However, it is unknown to what extent individual differences in neural representation of content and lived experience influence this brain-behavior relationship. We examined whether the strength of content-specific representations during persuasive messaging relates to later behavior change, and whether these relationships change as a function of individuals' social network composition. In our study, smokers viewed anti-smoking messages while undergoing fMRI and we measured changes in their smoking behavior one month later. Using representational similarity analyses, we found that the degree to which message content (i.e. health, social, or valence information) was represented in a self-related processing MPFC region was associated with later smoking behavior, with increased representations of negatively valenced (risk) information corresponding to greater message-consistent behavior change. Furthermore, the relationship between representations and behavior change depended on social network composition: smokers who had proportionally fewer smokers in their network showed increases in smoking behavior when social or health content was strongly represented in MPFC, whereas message-consistent behavior (i.e., less smoking) was more likely for those with proportionally more smokers in their social network who represented social or health consequences more strongly. These results highlight the dynamic relationship between representations in MPFC and key outcomes such as health behavior change; a complete understanding of the role of MPFC in motivation and action should take into account individual differences in neural representation of stimulus attributes and social context variables such as social network composition.

Altered functional connectivity in brain networks underlying self-referential processing in delusions of reference in schizophrenia

Delusions of reference in schizophrenia are thought to result from misattributions of self-relevance to neutral events. Activation of regions within the cortical midline structures (CMS; e.g., medial prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and precuneus) have been previously associated with self-referential processing in schizophrenia patients; however, the specificity of this pattern to individuals with current delusions of reference has yet to be determined. In the present study, we identified functional brain networks that underlie self-referential processing using task-based multivariate functional connectivity. Healthy control subjects (n=15) and schizophrenia patients with (n=14) and without (n=13) current delusions of reference were shown ambiguous statements while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, and evaluated whether these statements were thought to be specifically about them. Our results revealed two functionally distinct CMS networks that differed between patients and controls during self-referential processing: a posterior CMS network, which showed muted deactivity in non-delusional patients; and an anterior CMS network, in which delusional patients demonstrated hyperactivity. Furthermore, activity within the anterior CMS network across the three groups showed a linear pattern of increasing activity associated with greater intensity of delusions of reference, suggesting that hyperactivity in this network may underlie delusions of reference.

Anosognosia for memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment: Insight into the neural mechanism using functional and molecular imaging

Anosognosia, or loss of insight of memory deficits, is a common and striking symptom in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previous findings in AD dementia patients suggest that anosognosia is due to both functional metabolic changes within cortical midline structures involved in self-referential processes, as well as functional disconnection between these regions. The present study aims to extend these findings by investigating the neural correlates of anosognosia in the prodromal stage of AD. Here, we used regional brain metabolism (resting state 18-F fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET)) to unravel the metabolic correlates of anosognosia in subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and subsequently resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) to investigate the intrinsic connectivity disruption between brain regions. Thirty-one subjects (mean age: 74.1; Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) global score: 0.5) with aMCI, and 251 cognitively normal (CN) older adults (mean age: 73.3; CDR: 0) were included as a reference group for behavioral and FDG data. An anosognosia index was obtained by calculating a discrepancy score between subjective and objective memory scores. All subjects underwent FDG-PET for glucose metabolism measurement, and aMCI subjects underwent additional rs-fMRI for intrinsic connectivity measurement. Voxel-wise correlations between anosognosia and neuroimaging data were conducted in the aMCI subjects. Subjects with aMCI had significantly decreased memory awareness as compared to the CN older adults. Greater anosognosia in aMCI subjects was associated with reduced glucose metabolism in the posterior cingulate (PCC) cortices and hippocampus. Intrinsic connectivity analyses revealed a significant association between anosognosia and attenuated functional connectivity between the PCC seed region and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) as well as bilateral inferior parietal lobes (IPL). These findings provide further evidence that implicates cortical midline structures and hippocampus in the awareness of memory deficits. Investigating neuroimaging changes that co-vary with memory awareness may improve our ability to identify the cause of anosognosia and ultimately increase our chances for its treatment.

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A multimodal approach to study the mechanism underlying anosognosia is proposed.

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Mild Cognitive Impairment subjects underestimate their memory deficits.

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Anosognosia is related to reduced posterior cingulate and hippocampal metabolism.

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Anosognosia is related to disconnection between regions subserving self-reflection.

The Value of Sharing Information: A Neural Account of Information Transmission

Humans routinely share information with one another. What drives this behavior? We used neuroimaging to test an account of information selection and sharing that emphasizes inherent reward in self-reflection and connecting with other people. Participants underwent functional MRI while they considered personally reading and sharing New York Times articles. Activity in neural regions involved in positive valuation, self-related processing, and taking the perspective of others was significantly associated with decisions to select and share articles, and scaled with preferences to do so. Activity in all three sets of regions was greater when participants considered sharing articles with other people rather than selecting articles to read themselves. The findings suggest that people may consider value not only to themselves but also to others even when selecting news articles to consume personally. Further, sharing heightens activity in these pathways, in line with our proposal that humans derive value from self-reflection and connecting to others via sharing.

Memory self-awareness in the preclinical and prodromal stages of Alzheimer's disease

While loss of insight of cognitive deficits, anosognosia, is a common symptom in Alzheimer's disease dementia, there is a lack of consensus regarding the presence of altered awareness of memory function in the preclinical and prodromal stages of the disease. Paradoxically, very early in the Alzheimer's disease process, individuals may experience heightened awareness of memory changes before any objective cognitive deficits can be detected, here referred to as hypernosognosia. In contrast, awareness of memory dysfunction shown by individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is very variable, ranging from marked concern to severe lack of insight. This study aims at improving our mechanistic understanding of how alterations in memory self-awareness are related to pathological changes in clinically normal (CN) adults and MCI patients. 297 CN and MCI patients underwent PiB-PET (Positron Emission Tomography using Pittsburgh Compound B) in vivo amyloid imaging. Amyloid burden was estimated from Alzheimer's disease vulnerable regions, including the frontal, lateral parietal and lateral temporal, and retrosplenial cortex. Memory self-awareness was assessed using discrepancy scores between subjective and objective measures of memory function. A set of univariate analysis of variance were performed to assess the relationship between self-awareness of memory and amyloid pathology. Whereas CN individuals harboring amyloid pathology demonstrated hypernosognosia, MCI patients with increased amyloid pathology demonstrated anosognosia. In contrast, MCI patients with low amounts of amyloid were observed to have normal insight into their memory functions. Altered self-awareness of memory tracks with amyloid pathology. The findings of variability of awareness may have important implications for the reliability of self-report of dysfunction across the spectrum of preclinical and prodromal Alzheimer's disease.

Default mode functional connectivity is associated with social functioning in schizophrenia

Individuals with schizophrenia display notable deficits in social functioning. Research indicates that neural connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) is related to social cognition and social functioning in healthy and clinical populations. However, the association between DMN connectivity, social cognition, and social functioning has not been studied in schizophrenia. For the present study, the authors used resting-state neuroimaging data to evaluate connectivity between the main DMN hubs (i.e., the medial prefrontal cortex [mPFC] and the posterior cingulate cortex-anterior precuneus [PPC]) in individuals with schizophrenia (n = 28) and controls (n = 32). The authors also examined whether DMN connectivity was associated with social functioning via social attainment (measured by the Specific Levels of Functioning Scale) and social competence (measured by the Social Skills Performance Assessment), and if social cognition mediates the association between DMN connectivity and these measures of social functioning. Results revealed that DMN connectivity did not differ between individuals with schizophrenia and controls. However, connectivity between the mPFC and PCC hubs was significantly associated with social competence and social attainment in individuals with schizophrenia but not in controls as reflected by a significant group-by-connectivity interaction. Social cognition did not mediate the association between DMN connectivity and social functioning in individuals with schizophrenia. The findings suggest that fronto-parietal DMN connectivity in particular may be differentially associated with social functioning in schizophrenia and controls. As a result, DMN connectivity may be used as a neuroimaging marker to monitor treatment response or as a potential target for interventions that aim to enhance social functioning in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record

A neural model of valuation and information virality

Information sharing is an integral part of human interaction that serves to build social relationships and affects attitudes and behaviors in individuals and large groups. We present a unifying neurocognitive framework of mechanisms underlying information sharing at scale (virality). We argue that expectations regarding self-related and social consequences of sharing (e.g., in the form of potential for self-enhancement or social approval) are integrated into a domain-general value signal that encodes the value of sharing a piece of information. This value signal translates into population-level virality. In two studies (n = 41 and 39 participants), we tested these hypotheses using functional neuroimaging. Neural activity in response to 80 New York Times articles was observed in theory-driven regions of interest associated with value, self, and social cognitions. This activity then was linked to objectively logged population-level data encompassing n = 117,611 internet shares of the articles. In both studies, activity in neural regions associated with self-related and social cognition was indirectly related to population-level sharing through increased neural activation in the brain's value system. Neural activity further predicted population-level outcomes over and above the variance explained by article characteristics and commonly used self-report measures of sharing intentions. This parsimonious framework may help advance theory, improve predictive models, and inform new approaches to effective intervention. More broadly, these data shed light on the core functions of sharing-to express ourselves in positive ways and to strengthen our social bonds.

Move me, astonish me… delight my eyes and brain: The Vienna Integrated Model of top-down and bottom-up processes in Art Perception (VIMAP) and corresponding affective, evaluative, and neurophysiological correlates

This paper has a rather audacious purpose: to present a comprehensive theory explaining, and further providing hypotheses for the empirical study of, the multiple ways by which people respond to art. Despite common agreement that interaction with art can be based on a compelling, and occasionally profound, psychological experience, the nature of these interactions is still under debate. We propose a model, The Vienna Integrated Model of Art Perception (VIMAP), with the goal of resolving the multifarious processes that can occur when we perceive and interact with visual art. Specifically, we focus on the need to integrate bottom-up, artwork-derived processes, which have formed the bulk of previous theoretical and empirical assessments, with top-down mechanisms which can describe how individuals adapt or change within their processing experience, and thus how individuals may come to particularly moving, disturbing, transformative, as well as mundane, results. This is achieved by combining several recent lines of theoretical research into a new integrated approach built around three processing checks, which we argue can be used to systematically delineate the possible outcomes in art experience. We also connect our model's processing stages to specific hypotheses for emotional, evaluative, and physiological factors, and address main topics in psychological aesthetics including provocative reactions-chills, awe, thrills, sublime-and difference between "aesthetic" and "everyday" emotional response. Finally, we take the needed step of connecting stages to functional regions in the brain, as well as broader core networks that may coincide with the proposed cognitive checks, and which taken together can serve as a basis for future empirical and theoretical art research.

Coherent activity between brain regions that code for value is linked to the malleability of human behavior

Brain activity in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) during exposure to persuasive messages can predict health behavior change. This brain-behavior relationship has been linked to areas of MPFC previously associated with self-related processing; however, the mechanism underlying this relationship is unclear. We explore two components of self-related processing - self-reflection and subjective valuation - and examine coherent activity between relevant networks of brain regions during exposure to health messages encouraging exercise and discouraging sedentary behaviors. We find that objectively logged reductions in sedentary behavior in the following month are linked to functional connectivity within brain regions associated with positive valuation, but not within regions associated with self-reflection on personality traits. Furthermore, functional connectivity between valuation regions contributes additional information compared to average brain activation within single brain regions. These data support an account in which MPFC integrates the value of messages to the self during persuasive health messaging and speak to broader questions of how humans make decisions about how to behave.

Interactions between the default network and dorsal attention network vary across default subsystems, time, and cognitive states

Anticorrelation between the default network (DN) and dorsal attention network (DAN) is thought to be an intrinsic aspect of functional brain organization reflecting competing functions. However, the effect size of functional connectivity (FC) between the DN and DAN has yet to be established. Furthermore, the stability of anticorrelations across distinct DN subsystems, different contexts, and time, remains unexplored. In study 1 we summarize effect sizes of DN-DAN FC from 20 studies, and in study 2 we probe the variability of DN-DAN interactions across six different cognitive states in a new data set. We show that: (i) the DN and DAN have an independent rather than anticorrelated relationship when global signal regression is not used (median effect size across studies: r=-.06; 95% CI: -.15 to .08); (ii) the DAN exhibits weak negative FC with the DN Core subsystem but is uncorrelated with the dorsomedial prefrontal and medial temporal lobe subsystems; (iii) DN-DAN interactions vary significantly across different cognitive states; (iv) DN-DAN FC fluctuates across time between periods of anticorrelation and periods of positive correlation; and (v) changes across time in the strength of DN-DAN coupling are coordinated with interactions involving the frontoparietal control network (FPCN). Overall, the observed weak effect sizes related to DN-DAN anticorrelation suggest the need to re-conceptualize the nature of interactions between these networks. Furthermore, our findings demonstrate that DN-DAN interactions are not stable, but rather, exhibit substantial variability across time and context, and are coordinated with broader network dynamics involving the FPCN.

Neural Mechanisms of Positive Mood Induced Modulation of Reality Monitoring

This study investigates the neural mechanisms of mood induced modulation of cognition, specifically, on reality monitoring abilities. Reality monitoring is the ability to accurately distinguish the source of self-generated information from externally-presented contextual information. When participants were in a positive mood, compared to a neutral mood, they significantly improved their source memory identification abilities, particularly for self-generated information. However, being in a negative mood had no effect on reality monitoring abilities. Additionally, when participants were in a positive mood state, they showed activation in several regions that predisposed them to perform better at reality monitoring. Specifically, positive mood induced activity within the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) was associated with improvements in subsequent identification of self-generated information, and positive mood induced activation within the striatum (putamen) facilitated better identification of externally-presented information. These findings indicate that regions within mPFC, PCC and striatum are sensitive to positive mood-cognition enhancing effects that enable participants to be better prepared for subsequent reality monitoring decision-making.

Differential association of default mode network connectivity and rumination in healthy individuals and remitted MDD patients

Rumination is associated with increased default-mode network (DMN) activity and functional connectivity (FC) in depressed and healthy individuals. In this study, we sought to examine the relationship between self-reported rumination and resting-state FC in the DMN and cognitive control networks in 25 remitted depressed patients and 25 matched healthy controls using independent component and seed-based analyses. We also explored potential group differences in the global pattern of resting-state FC. Healthy subjects with increased levels of rumination exhibited increased anterior DMN connectivity with the posterior DMN and the dorsal attention network and low connectivity within the anterior DMN. On the other hand, remitted depressed ruminators patients were associated with the opposite FC pattern in these regions. Based on global FC patterns, a support vector machine algorithm correctly classified 92% of the subjects into their respective group by a leave-one-out cross-validation. Whole-brain FC analysis also revealed a group by rumination interaction effect within the DMN. The present findings highlight the different functional roles of the anterior and the posterior DMN, and provide novel insights into the underlying neural mechanisms leading to depression relapse.

Neural correlates of the self-concept in adolescence-A focus on the significance of friends

The formation of a coherent and unified self-concept represents a key developmental stage during adolescence. Imaging studies on self-referential processing in adolescents are rare, and it is not clear whether neural structures involved in self-reflection are also involved in reflections of familiar others. In the current study, 41 adolescents were asked to make judgments about trait adjectives during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): they had to indicate whether the word describes themselves, their friends, their teachers or politicians. Findings indicate a greater overlap in neural networks for responses to self- and friend-related judgments compared to teachers and politicians. In particular, classic self-reference structures such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and medial posterior parietal cortex also exhibited higher activation to judgments about friends. In contrast, brain responses towards judgments of teachers (familiar others) compared to politicians (unfamiliar others) did not significantly differ. Results support behavioral findings of a greater relevance of friends for the development of a self-concept during adolescence and indicate underlying functional brain processes. Hum Brain Mapp 38:987-996, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Neural correlates of older adults' self-overestimation of stepping-over ability

A growing body of literature indicates that cognitively intact older adults tend to overestimate their physical functioning (e.g., step-over ability), which may lead to fall risk. However, the neural correlates underlying this phenomenon are still unclear. We therefore investigated the neural basis of older adults' self-overestimation of stepping-over ability. A total of 108 well-functioning community dwelling older adults (mean age = 73.9 years) performed step-over tests (SOT) in two ways: self-estimation of step-over ability and an actual step-over task. During the self-estimation task, participants observed a horizontal bar at a distance of 7 m and estimated the maximum height (EH) of successful SOT trials. The actual SOT was then performed to determine the actual maximum height (AH) of successful trials. Participants also underwent positron emission tomography with ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose at rest to assess cerebral neural activity. The SOT showed that 22.2 % of participants overestimated their step-over ability. A regression analysis adjusted for potential covariates showed that increased self-estimation error (difference between EH and AH) was correlated with lower glucose metabolism in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and left frontal pole. Only the significant correlation between self-estimation error and OFC activity persisted after correcting for multiple comparisons. For well-functioning healthy older adults, overlooking one's own functional decline may be influenced by reduced metabolic activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex, particularly in the OFC. Our findings also suggest that functional decline in the OFC prevents older adults from updating the qualitative/quantitative values of their impaired physical abilities.

Anosognosia for Memory Impairment in Addiction: Insights from Neuroimaging and Neuropsychological Assessment of Metamemory

In addiction, notably Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), patients often have a tendency to fail to acknowledge the reality of the disease and to minimize the physical, psychological, and social difficulties attendant to chronic alcohol consumption. This lack of awareness can reduce the chances of initiating and maintaining sobriety. Presented here is a model focusing on compromised awareness in individuals with AUD of mild to moderate cognitive deficits, in particular, for episodic memory impairment-the ability to learn new information, such as recent personal experiences. Early in abstinence, alcoholics can be unaware of their memory deficits and overestimate their mnemonic capacities, which can be investigated with metamemory paradigms. Relevant neuropsychological and neuroimaging results considered suggest that the alcoholics' impairment of awareness of their attenuated memory function can be a clinical manifestation explained mechanistically by neurobiological factors, including compromise of brain systems that result in a mild form of mnemonic anosognosia. Specifically, unawareness of memory impairment in AUD may result from a lack of personal knowledge updating attributable to damage in brain regions or connections supporting conscious recollection in episodic memory. Likely candidates are posterior parietal and medial frontal regions known to be integral part of the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the insula leading to an impaired switching mechanism between the DMN and the Central-Executive Control (i.e., Lateral Prefronto-Parietal) Network. The cognitive concepts and neural substrates noted for addictive disorders may also be relevant for problems in self-identification of functional impairment resulting from injury following war-related blast, sport-related concussion, and insidiously occurring dementia.

Hidden sources of joy, fear, and sadness: Explicit versus implicit neural processing of musical emotions

Music is often used to regulate emotions and mood. Typically, music conveys and induces emotions even when one does not attend to them. Studies on the neural substrates of musical emotions have, however, only examined brain activity when subjects have focused on the emotional content of the music. Here we address with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the neural processing of happy, sad, and fearful music with a paradigm in which 56 subjects were instructed to either classify the emotions (explicit condition) or pay attention to the number of instruments playing (implicit condition) in 4-s music clips. In the implicit vs. explicit condition, stimuli activated bilaterally the inferior parietal lobule, premotor cortex, caudate, and ventromedial frontal areas. The cortical dorsomedial prefrontal and occipital areas activated during explicit processing were those previously shown to be associated with the cognitive processing of music and emotion recognition and regulation. Moreover, happiness in music was associated with activity in the bilateral auditory cortex, left parahippocampal gyrus, and supplementary motor area, whereas the negative emotions of sadness and fear corresponded with activation of the left anterior cingulate and middle frontal gyrus and down-regulation of the orbitofrontal cortex. Our study demonstrates for the first time in healthy subjects the neural underpinnings of the implicit processing of brief musical emotions, particularly in frontoparietal, dorsolateral prefrontal, and striatal areas of the brain.

Cognitive and neural models of threat appraisal in psychosis: A theoretical integration

Cognitive models of psychosis propose that maladaptive appraisals of anomalous experiences contribute to distress and disability in psychosis. Attentional, attributional and reasoning biases are hypothesised to drive these threat-based appraisals. Experimental and self-report data have provided support for the presence of these biases in psychosis populations, but recently there have been calls for neurobiological data to be integrated into these findings. Currently, little investigation has been conducted into the neural correlates of maladaptive appraisals. Experimental and neuroimaging research in social cognition employing threatening stimuli provide the closest equivalent of maladaptive appraisal in psychosis. Consequently, a rapprochement of these two literatures was attempted in order to identify neural networks relevant to threat appraisal in psychosis. This revealed overlapping models of aberrant emotion processing in anxiety and schizophrenia, encompassing the amygdala, insula, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex, and prefrontal cortex. These models posit that aberrant activity in these systems relates to altered emotional significance detection and affect regulation, providing a conceptual overlap with threat appraisal in psychosis, specifically attentional and attributional biases towards threat. It remains to be seen if direct examination of these biases using neuroimaging paradigms supports the theoretical integration of extant models of emotion processing and maladaptive appraisals in psychosis.

Differential compromise of prospective and retrospective metamemory monitoring and their dissociable structural brain correlates

Metamemory refers to personal knowledge about one's own memory ability that invokes cognitive processes relevant to monitoring and controlling memory. An impaired monitoring system can potentially result in unawareness of symptoms as can occur in addiction denial. Monitoring processes can be assessed with prospective measures such as Feeling-Of-Knowing (FOK) judgments on prediction of future recognition performance, or retrospective confidence judgments (RCJ) made on previous memory performance. Alcoholic patients with amnesia showed poor FOK but intact RCJ. The neuropsychological continuum from mild to moderate deficits in nonamnesic to amnesic alcoholism raised the possibility that alcoholics uncomplicated by clinically-detectable amnesia may suffer anosognosia for their mild memory deficits. Herein 24 abstinent alcoholics and 26 age-matched controls completed an episodic memory paradigm including prospective FOK and retrospective RCJ monitoring measures and underwent 3T structural magnetic resonance imaging. Alcoholics were less accurate than controls in recognition and in assessing their future recognition performance, which was marked by overestimation, but were as accurate as controls on confidence ratings of actual recognition performance. Examination of brain structure-function relations revealed a double dissociation where FOK accuracy was selectively related to insular volume, and retrospective confidence accuracy was selectively related to frontolimbic structural volumes. Impaired FOK with intact RCJ was consistent with mild anosognosia and suggested evidence for neuropsychological and neural mechanisms of unawareness in addiction.

Insight in Psychiatry and Neurology: State of the Art, and Hypotheses

In spite of the increasing number of studies on insight in psychiatry and also in neurology and psychology, its nature is still elusive. It encompasses at least three fundamental characteristics: the awareness of suffering from an illness, an understanding of the cause and source of this suffering, and an acknowledgment of the need for treatment. As such, insight is fundamental for patients' management, prognosis, and treatment. Not surprisingly, the majority of available data, which have been gathered on schizophrenia, show a relationship between low insight and poorer outcomes. For mood disorders, however, insight is associated with less positive results. For other psychiatric disorders, insight has rarely been investigated. In neurology, the impaired ability to recognize the presence of sensory, perceptual, motor, affective, or cognitive functioning-referred to as anosognosia-has been related to damage of specific brain regions. This article provides a comprehensive review of insight in different psychiatric and neurological disorders, with a special focus on brain areas and neurotransmitters that serve as the substrate for this complex phenomenon.

Influence of the cortical midline structures on moral emotion and motivation in moral decision-making

The present study aims to examine the relationship between the cortical midline structures (CMS), which have been regarded to be associated with selfhood, and moral decision making processes at the neural level. Traditional moral psychological studies have suggested the role of moral self as the moderator of moral cognition, so activity of moral self would present at the neural level. The present study examined the interaction between the CMS and other moral-related regions by conducting psycho-physiological interaction analysis of functional images acquired while 16 subjects were solving moral dilemmas. Furthermore, we performed Granger causality analysis to demonstrate the direction of influences between activities in the regions in moral decision-making. We first demonstrate there are significant positive interactions between two central CMS seed regions-i.e., the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)-and brain regions associated with moral functioning including the cerebellum, brainstem, midbrain, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula (AI); on the other hand, the posterior insula (PI) showed significant negative interaction with the seed regions. Second, several significant Granger causality was found from CMS to insula regions particularly under the moral-personal condition. Furthermore, significant dominant influence from the AI to PI was reported. Moral psychological implications of these findings are discussed. The present study demonstrated the significant interaction and influence between the CMS and morality-related regions while subject were solving moral dilemmas. Given that, activity in the CMS is significantly involved in human moral functioning.

Aberrant Salience Is Related to Dysfunctional Self-Referential Processing in Psychosis

BACKGROUND

A dysfunctional differentiation between self-relevant and irrelevant information may affect the perception of environmental stimuli as abnormally salient. The aberrant salience hypothesis assumes that positive symptoms arise from an attribution of salience to irrelevant stimuli accompanied by the feeling of self-relevance. Self-referential processing relies on the activation of cortical midline structures which was demonstrated to be impaired in psychosis. We investigated the neural correlates of self-referential processing, aberrant salience attribution, and the relationship between these 2 measures across the psychosis continuum.

METHODS

Twenty-nine schizophrenia patients, 24 healthy individuals with subclinical delusional ideation, and 50 healthy individuals participated in this study. Aberrant salience was assessed behaviorally in terms of reaction times to task irrelevant cues. Participants performed a self-reference task during fMRI in which they had to apply neutral trait words to them or to a public figure. The correlation between self-referential processing and aberrant salience attribution was tested.

RESULTS

Schizophrenia patients displayed increased aberrant salience attribution compared with healthy controls and individuals with subclinical delusional ideation, while the latter exhibited intermediate aberrant salience scores. In the self-reference task, schizophrenia patients showed reduced activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), but individuals with subclinical delusional ideation did not differ from healthy controls. In schizophrenia patients, vmPFC activation correlated negatively with implicit aberrant salience attribution.

CONCLUSIONS

Higher aberrant salience attribution in schizophrenia patients is related to reduced vmPFC activation during self-referential judgments suggesting that aberrant relevance coding is reflected in decreased neural self-referential processing as well as in aberrant salience attribution.

Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation

Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely non-evaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of mindfulness affects downstream emotion regulatory processes to impact the sense of meaning in life. To fill this lacuna, here we describe the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, from which we derive a novel process model of mindful positive emotion regulation informed by affective science, in which mindfulness is proposed to introduce flexibility in the generation of cognitive appraisals by enhancing interoceptive attention, thereby expanding the scope of cognition to facilitate reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experience. This process is proposed to culminate in a deepened capacity for meaning-making and greater engagement with life.

Brain Metabolic Dysfunction in Capgras Delusion During Alzheimer's Disease: A Positron Emission Tomography Study

Capgras delusion is characterized by the misidentification of people and by the delusional belief that the misidentified persons have been replaced by impostors, generally perceived as persecutors. Since little is known regarding the neural correlates of Capgras syndrome, the cerebral metabolic pattern of a patient with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Capgras syndrome was compared with those of 24-healthy elderly participants and 26 patients with AD without delusional syndrome. Comparing the healthy group with the AD group, the patient with AD had significant hypometabolism in frontal and posterior midline structures. In the light of current neural models of face perception, our patients with Capgras syndrome may be related to impaired recognition of a familiar face, subserved by the posterior cingulate/precuneus cortex, and impaired reflection about personally relevant knowledge related to a face, subserved by the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

Brain Activity in Self- and Value-Related Regions in Response to Online Antismoking Messages Predicts Behavior Change

In this study, we combined approaches from media psychology and neuroscience to ask whether brain activity in response to online antismoking messages can predict smoking behavior change. In particular, we examined activity in subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex linked to self- and value-related processing, to test whether these neurocognitive processes play a role in message-consistent behavior change. We observed significant relationships between activity in both brain regions of interest and behavior change (such that higher activity predicted a larger reduction in smoking). Furthermore, activity in these brain regions predicted variance independent of traditional, theory-driven self-report metrics such as intention, self-efficacy, and risk perceptions. We propose that valuation is an additional cognitive process that should be investigated further as we search for a mechanistic explanation of the relationship between brain activity and media effects relevant to health behavior change.

Frontolimbic functioning during threat-related attention: Relations to early behavioral inhibition and anxiety in children

Children with behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperament characterized by biologically-based hyper-vigilance to novelty, display threat-related attention biases (AB) that shape developmental trajectories of risk for anxiety. Here we explore the relations between BI, neural function, and anxiety. Fifty-six 9-12-year-olds (23 behaviorally inhibited) performed the dot-probe task while undergoing fMRI. AB scores were not associated with BI group or parent-rated anxiety symptoms. Trials requiring attention orienting away from threat engaged an executive and threat-attention network (dlPFC, vlPFC, mPFC, and amygdala). Within that network, behaviorally inhibited children showed greater activation in the right dlPFC. Heightened dlPFC activation related to increased anxiety, and BI levels accounted for the direct relation between dlPFC activation and anxiety. Behaviorally inhibited children may engage the executive attention system during threat-related processing as a compensatory mechanism. We provide preliminary evidence that the link between PFC functioning and anxiety might be attributed to early-emerging temperamental vulnerabilities present before the emergence of clinical anxiety.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Advanced Nursing Practice: A Nonpharmacologic Approach to Health Promotion, Chronic Disease Management, and Symptom Control

The aim of this article is to discuss how advanced practice nurses (APNs) can incorporate mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) as a nonpharmacologic clinical tool in their practice. Over the last 30 years, patients and providers have increasingly used complementary and holistic therapies for the nonpharmacologic management of acute and chronic diseases. Mindfulness-based interventions, specifically MBSR, have been tested and applied within a variety of patient populations. There is strong evidence to support that the use of MBSR can improve a range of biological and psychological outcomes in a variety of medical illnesses, including acute and chronic pain, hypertension, and disease prevention. This article will review the many ways APNs can incorporate MBSR approaches for health promotion and disease/symptom management into their practice. We conclude with a discussion of how nurses can obtain training and certification in MBSR. Given the significant and growing literature supporting the use of MBSR in the prevention and treatment of chronic disease, increased attention on how APNs can incorporate MBSR into clinical practice is necessary.

Self-reflection modulates the outcome evaluation process: Evidence from an ERP study

Recent research demonstrated structural overlap between reward and self processing, but the functional relationship that explains how self processing influences reward processing remains unclear. The present study used an experimentally constrained reflection task to investigate whether individuals' outcome evaluations in a gambling task are modulated by task-unrelated self- and other-reflection processes. The self- and other-reflection task contained descriptions of the self or others, and brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while 16 normal adults performed a gambling task. The ERP analysis focused on the feedback-related negativity (FRN) component. We found that the difference wave of FRN increased in the self-reflection condition compared with the other-reflection condition. The present findings provide direct evidence that self processing can influence reward processing.

Neural correlates of personal goal processing during episodic future thinking and mind-wandering: An ALE meta-analysis

The ability to imagine the future is a complex mental faculty that depends on an ensemble of cognitive processes supported by an extended set of brain regions. Our aim here was to shed light on one key component of future thinking--personal goal processing--and to determine its neural correlates during both directed and spontaneous forms of thoughts. To address this question, we performed separate ALE meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies of episodic future thinking (EFT), mind-wandering, and personal goal processing, and then investigated the commonalities and differences in brain activity between these three domains. The results showed that the three domains activated a common set of brain regions within the default network and, most notably, the medial prefrontal cortex. This finding suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex mediates the processing of personal goals during both EFT and mind-wandering. Differences in activation were also observed, and notably regions supporting cognitive control processes (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) were recruited to a lesser extent during mind-wandering than experimentally directed future thinking, suggesting that different kinds of self-generated thoughts may recruit varying levels of attentional control abilities.

Inter-individual variability in metacognitive ability for visuomotor performance and underlying brain structures

Metacognition refers to the ability to discriminate between one's own correct and incorrect decisions. The neurobiological underpinnings of metacognition have mainly been studied in perceptual decision-making. Here we investigated whether differences in brain structure predict individual variability in metacognitive sensitivity for visuomotor performance. Participants had to draw straight trajectories toward visual targets, which could unpredictably deviate around detection threshold, report such deviations when detected, and rate their confidence level for such reports. Structural brain MRI analyses revealed that larger gray-matter volume (GMV) in the left middle occipital gyrus, left medial parietal cortex, and right postcentral gyrus predicted higher deviation detection sensitivity. By contrast, larger GMV in the right prefrontal cortex but also right anterior insula and right fusiform gyrus predicted higher metacognitive sensitivity. These results extend past research by linking metacognitive sensitivity for visuomotor behavior to brain areas involved in action agency (insula), executive control (prefrontal cortex) and vision (fusiform).

Abnormal Social Reward Responses in Anorexia Nervosa: An fMRI Study

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) display impaired social interactions, implicated in the development and prognosis of the disorder. Importantly, social behavior is modulated by reward-based processes, and dysfunctional at-brain-level reward responses have been involved in AN neurobiological models. However, no prior evidence exists of whether these neural alterations would be equally present in social contexts. In this study, we conducted a cross-sectional social-judgment functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of 20 restrictive-subtype AN patients and 20 matched healthy controls. Brain activity during acceptance and rejection was investigated and correlated with severity measures (Eating Disorder Inventory -EDI-2) and with personality traits of interest known to modulate social behavior (The Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire). Patients showed hypoactivation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) during social acceptance and hyperactivation of visual areas during social rejection. Ventral striatum activation during rejection was positively correlated in patients with clinical severity scores. During acceptance, activation of the frontal opercula-anterior insula and dorsomedial/dorsolateral prefrontal cortices was differentially associated with reward sensitivity between groups. These results suggest an abnormal motivational drive for social stimuli, and involve overlapping social cognition and reward systems leading to a disruption of adaptive responses in the processing of social reward. The specific association of reward-related regions with clinical and psychometric measures suggests the putative involvement of reward structures in the maintenance of pathological behaviors in AN.

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective

Cultivation of mindfulness, the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment, produces beneficial effects on well-being and ameliorates psychiatric and stress-related symptoms. Mindfulness meditation has therefore increasingly been incorporated into psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the number of publications in the field has sharply increased over the last two decades, there is a paucity of theoretical reviews that integrate the existing literature into a comprehensive theoretical framework. In this article, we explore several components through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects: (a) attention regulation, (b) body awareness, (c) emotion regulation (including reappraisal and exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation), and (d) change in perspective on the self. Recent empirical research, including practitioners' self-reports and experimental data, provides evidence supporting these mechanisms. Functional and structural neuroimaging studies have begun to explore the neuroscientific processes underlying these components. Evidence suggests that mindfulness practice is associated with neuroplastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network, and default mode network structures. The authors suggest that the mechanisms described here work synergistically, establishing a process of enhanced self-regulation. Differentiating between these components seems useful to guide future basic research and to specifically target areas of development in the treatment of psychological disorders.