Brain responses to social feedback in internalizing disorders: A comprehensive review

Enhancing ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activation mitigates social pain and modifies subsequent social attitudes: Insights from TMS and fMRI

Social pain, a multifaceted emotional response triggered by interpersonal rejection or criticism, profoundly impacts mental well-being and social interactions. While prior research has implicated the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) in mitigating social pain, the precise neural mechanisms and downstream effects on subsequent social attitudes remain elusive. This study employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) integrated with fMRI recordings during a social pain task to elucidate these aspects. Eighty participants underwent either active TMS targeting the rVLPFC (n = 41) or control stimulation at the vertex (n = 39). Our results revealed that TMS-induced rVLPFC facilitation significantly reduced self-reported social pain, confirming the causal role of the rVLPFC in social pain relief. Functional connectivity analyses demonstrated enhanced interactions between the rVLPFC and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, emphasizing the collaborative engagement of prefrontal regions in emotion regulation. Significantly, we observed that negative social feedback led to negative social attitudes, whereas rVLPFC activation countered this detrimental effect, showcasing the potential of the rVLPFC as a protective buffer against adverse social interactions. Moreover, our study uncovered the impact role of the hippocampus in subsequent social attitudes, a relationship particularly pronounced during excitatory TMS over the rVLPFC. These findings offer promising avenues for improving mental health within the intricate dynamics of social interactions. By advancing our comprehension of the neural mechanisms underlying social pain relief, this research introduces novel intervention strategies for individuals grappling with social distress. Empowering individuals to modulate rVLPFC activation may facilitate reshaping social attitudes and successful reintegration into communal life.

How and when social evaluative feedback is processed in the brain: A systematic review on ERP studies

Social evaluative feedback informs the receiver of the other's views, which may contain judgments of personality-related traits and/or the level of likability. Such kinds of social evaluative feedback are of particular importance to humans. Event-related potentials (ERPs) can directly measure where in the processing stream feedback valence, expectancy, or contextual relevance modulate information processing. This review provides an overview and systematization of studies and early, mid-latency, and late ERP effects. Early effects were inconsistently reported for all factors. Feedback valence effects are more consistently reported for specific mid-latency ERPs (Reward Positivity, RewP, and Early Posterior Negativity, EPN) and late positivities (P3 and Late Positive Potential, LPP). Unexpected feedback consistently increased the Feedback Related Negativity (FRN) and, less consistently, decreased P3 amplitudes. Contextual relevance of the sender (e.g., human vs computer sender) or self-relatedness increased mid-latency to late ERPs. Interactions between valence and other factors were less often found, arising during mid-latency stages, where most consistent interactions showed larger EPN and P3 amplitude differences for valent feedback in a more relevant context. The ERP findings highlight that social evaluative feedback is consistently differentiated during mid-latency processing stages. The review discusses the relevance of findings, possible shortcomings of different experimental designs, and open questions. Furthermore, we suggest concrete venues for future research.

Sticky criticism? Affective and neural responses to parental criticism and praise in adolescents with depression

BACKGROUND

Parent-adolescent interactions, particularly parental criticism and praise, have previously been identified as factors relevant to self-concept development and, when negative, to adolescent depression. Yet, whether adolescents with depression show aberrant emotional and neural reactivity to parental criticism and praise is understudied.

METHODS

Adolescents with depression (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 59) received feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of negative ('untrustworthy'), neutral ('chaotic'), and positive ('respectful') personality evaluations while in an MRI-scanner. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Beforehand, adolescents had rated whether these personality evaluations matched their self-views.

RESULTS

In both groups, mood decreased after criticism and increased after praise. Adolescents with depression reported blunted mood responses after praise, whereas there were no mood differences after criticism. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls) exhibited increased activity in response to criticism in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Praise consistent with adolescents' self-views improved mood independent of depression status, while criticism matching self-views resulted in smaller mood increases in adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls). Exploratory analyses indicated that adolescents with depression recalled criticism (v. praise) more.

CONCLUSIONS

Adolescents with depression might be especially attentive to parental criticism, as indexed by increased sgACC and hippocampus activity, and memorize this criticism more. Together with lower positive impact of praise, these findings suggest that cognitive biases in adolescent depression may affect how parental feedback is processed, and may be fed into their self-views.

The influence of self-esteem on interpersonal and competence evaluations: electrophysiological evidence from an ERP study

Using event-related potentials, this study examined how self-esteem affects neural responses to competence (interpersonal) feedback when the need for relatedness (competence) is thwarted or met. Participants with low and high self-esteem acted as advisors who selected one of two options for a putative advisee. Subsequently, they passively observed the advisee, accepted, or rejected their advice (i.e. interpersonal feedback) and received correct or incorrect outcomes (i.e. competence feedback). When interpersonal feedback was followed by competence feedback, high self-esteem participants showed a smaller P3 following incorrect than correct outcomes, irrespective of whether the advice had been accepted or rejected. However, low self-esteem participants showed this P3 effect only when the advice was rejected, and the P3 difference disappeared when the advice was accepted. When competence feedback was followed by interpersonal feedback, both low self-esteem and high self-esteem individuals showed a larger P2 for rejection than for acceptance and a larger late potential component for incorrect than correct outcomes. These findings suggest that when interpersonal feedback is followed by competence feedback, low self-esteem and high self-esteem individuals have a desire for self-positivity. When competence feedback is followed by interpersonal feedback, they may have motives for self-change. Our findings shed light on the motivational mechanisms for self-esteem and feedback.

Behavioral and psychiatric correlates of brain responses to social feedback

Maladaptive responses to peer acceptance and rejection arise in numerous psychiatric disorders in adolescence; yet, homogeneity and heterogeneity across disorders suggest common and unique mechanisms of impaired social function. We tested the hypothesis that social feedback is processed similarly to other forms of feedback (e.g., monetary) by examining the correspondence between the brain's response to social acceptance and rejection and behavioral performance on a separate reward and loss task. We also examined the relationship between these brain responses and depression and social anxiety severity. The sample consisted of one hundred and thirteen 16-21-year olds who received virtual peer acceptance/rejection feedback in an event-related potential (ERP) task. We used temporospatial principal component analysis and identified a component consistent with the reward positivity (RewP) or feedback negativity (FN). RewP to social acceptance was not significantly related to reward bias or the FN to social rejection related to loss avoidance. The relationship between RewP and depression severity, while nonsignificant, was of a similar magnitude to prior studies. Exploratory analyses yielded a significant relationship between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and blunted RewP and between lower SES and heightened loss avoidance and blunted reward bias. These findings build on prior work to improve our understanding of the function of the brain's response to social feedback, while also suggesting a pathway for further study, whereby poverty leads to depression via social and reward learning mechanisms.

Neural correlates of social exclusion and overinclusion in patients with borderline personality disorder: an fMRI study

BACKGROUND

Interpersonal difficulties of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are closely related to rejection sensitivity. The aim of the present study was to gain further insight into the experience and cerebral processing of social interactions in patients with BPD by using fMRI during experimentally induced experiences of social exclusion, inclusion, and overinclusion.

METHODS

The study involved 30 participants diagnosed with BPD (29 female and 1 male; age: M = 24.22, SD = 5.22) and 30 healthy controls (29 female and 1 male; age: M = 24.66, SD = 5.28) with no current or lifetime psychiatric diagnoses. In the fMRI session, all participants were asked to complete a Cyberball task that consisted of an alternating sequence of inclusion, exclusion, and overinclusion conditions.

RESULTS

Compared to healthy controls, participants with BPD reported higher levels of inner tension and more unpleasant emotions across all experimental conditions. At the neural level, the participants with BPD showed lower recruitment of the left hippocampus in response to social exclusion (relative to the inclusion condition) than the healthy controls did. Lower recruitment of the left hippocampus in this contrast was associated with childhood maltreatment in patients with BPD. However, this difference was no longer significant when we added the covariate of hippocampal volume to the analysis. During social overinclusion (relative to the inclusion condition), we observed no significant differences in a group comparison of neural activation.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of our study suggest that patients with BPD experience more discomfort than do healthy controls during social interactions. Compared to healthy participants, patients with BPD reported more inner tension and unpleasant emotions, irrespective of the extent to which others included them in social interactions. At a neural level, the participants with BPD showed a lower recruitment of the left hippocampus in response to social exclusion than the healthy controls did. The reduced activation of this neural structure could be related to a history of childhood maltreatment and smaller hippocampal volume in patients with BPD.

Allostatic-interoceptive anticipation of social rejection

Anticipating social stress evokes strong reactions in the organism, including interoceptive modulations. However, evidence for this claim comes from behavioral studies, often with inconsistent results, and relates almost solely to the reactive and recovery phase of social stress exposure. Here, we adopted an allostatic-interoceptive predictive coding framework to study interoceptive and exteroceptive anticipatory brain responses using a social rejection task. We analyzed the heart-evoked potential (HEP) and task-related oscillatory activity of 58 adolescents via scalp EEG, and 385 human intracranial recordings of three patients with intractable epilepsy. We found that anticipatory interoceptive signals increased in the face of unexpected social outcomes, reflected in larger negative HEP modulations. Such signals emerged from key brain allostatic-interoceptive network hubs, as shown by intracranial recordings. Exteroceptive signals were characterized by early activity between 1-15 Hz across conditions, and modulated by the probabilistic anticipation of reward-related outcomes, observed over distributed brain regions. Our findings suggest that the anticipation of a social outcome is characterized by allostatic-interoceptive modulations that prepare the organism for possible rejection. These results inform our understanding of interoceptive processing and constrain neurobiological models of social stress.

A neurocognitive model of early onset persistent and desistant antisocial behavior in early adulthood

It remains unclear which functional and neurobiological mechanisms are associated with persistent and desistant antisocial behavior in early adulthood. We reviewed the empirical literature and propose a neurocognitive social information processing model for early onset persistent and desistant antisocial behavior in early adulthood, focusing on how young adults evaluate, act upon, monitor, and learn about their goals and self traits. Based on the reviewed literature, we propose that persistent antisocial behavior is characterized by domain-general impairments in self-relevant and goal-related information processing, regulation, and learning, which is accompanied by altered activity in fronto-limbic brain areas. We propose that desistant antisocial development is associated with more effortful information processing, regulation and learning, that possibly balances self-relevant goals and specific situational characteristics. The proposed framework advances insights by considering individual differences such as psychopathic personality traits, and specific emotional characteristics (e.g., valence of social cues), to further illuminate functional and neural mechanisms underlying heterogenous developmental pathways. Finally, we address important open questions and offer suggestions for future research to improve scientific knowledge on general and context-specific expression and development of antisocial behavior in early adulthood.

Neural activation to peer acceptance and rejection in relation to concurrent and prospective depression risk in adolescent and pre-adolescent girls

Neurobiological sensitivity to peer interactions is a proposed marker of risk for adolescent depression. We investigated neural response to peer rejection and acceptance in relation to concurrent and prospective depression risk in adolescent and pre-adolescent girls. Participants were 76 girls (Mage=13, 45% racial/ethnic minorities) varying in depression risk: 22 with current major depressive disorder (MDD), 30 at High Risk for MDD based on parental history, and 24 at Low Risk with no psychiatric history. Girls participated in the Chatroom-Interact task-involving rejection and acceptance feedback from fictitious peers-while undergoing functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging. Activation in response to peer rejection and acceptance was extracted from regions of interest. Depressive symptoms were assessed at 6- and 12-month follow-up. Girls with MDD showed blunted left subgenual anterior cingulate response to acceptance versus girls in High and Low Risk groups. Girls in the High Risk group showed greater right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) and right anterior insula (AI) activation to both acceptance and rejection versus girls in the MDD (rTPJ) and Low Risk (rTPJ, AI) groups. Greater rTPJ response to rejection was associated with fewer depressive symptoms at 12-months and mediated the association between High Risk group status and 12-month depressive symptoms; greater rTPJ response to acceptance mediated the association between High Risk and increased 12-month depressive symptoms. Our finding of associations between altered neural response to peer interactions and concurrent and prospective depression risk/resilience highlights the importance of neural underpinnings of social cognition as risk and compensatory adaptations along the pathway to depression.

Excitatory brain stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex enhances voluntary distraction in depressed patients

BACKGROUND

While implicit distraction could ameliorate negative feelings in patients with major depressive disorders (MDD), it remains unclear whether patients could benefit from explicit, voluntary distraction. Meanwhile, though the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is established as a crucial brain region involved in attentional control, the causal relationship between the DLPFC and voluntary distraction is unexplored in patients.

METHODS

Combing explicit distraction and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), this study investigated whether TMS-activated DLPFC facilitates voluntary distraction in MDD patients. Eighty patients diagnosed with current MDD underwent either active (n = 40) or sham (n = 40) TMS sessions, followed by receiving negative social feedback from other patients, during which they were requied to use distraction strategy to down-regulate their painful feelings. Electroencephalogram was recorded during the task.

RESULTS

Both the subjective emotional rating and the amplitude of late positive potential showed that depressed patients successfully down-regulate their negative emotions via voluntary distraction, and the TMS-activated left DLPFC produced a larger benefit of emotion regulation compared to the sham TMS group. Results also revealed that while emotion regulation effect was negatively associated with depressive symptoms in the sham TMS group, this correlation was largely diminished when patients' left DLPFC was activated by TMS during the voluntary distraction.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings demonstrated that distraction is valuable for emotion regulation in MDD patients and they could be beneficial in voluntary distraction by activating their left DLPFC using neural modulation techniques. This study has valuable implications for clinical treatement of emotional dysregulation in MDD patients.

Neural sensitivity to peer feedback and depression symptoms in adolescents: a 2-year multiwave longitudinal study

BACKGROUND

Depression risk increases during adolescent development, and individual differences in neural sensitivity to peer feedback (rejection vs. acceptance) may be a key diathesis in understanding stress-related depression risk.

METHODS

At baseline, adolescents (12-14 years old; N = 124) completed clinical interviews and self-report symptom measures, and the Chatroom Task while MRI data were acquired. The majority of participants provided usable MRI data (N = 90; 76% female), which included adolescents with no maternal depression history (low risk n = 64) and those with a maternal depression history (high risk n = 26). Whole-brain regression models probed group differences in neural sensitivity following peer feedback, and whole-brain linear mixed-effects models examined neural sensitivity to peer feedback by peer stress interactions relating to depression symptoms at up to nine longitudinal assessments over 2 years.

RESULTS

Whole-brain cluster-corrected results indicated brain activation moderating the strong positive association between peer interpersonal stress and depression over time. This included activation in the anterior insula, cingulate, amygdala, and striatum during anticipation and receipt of feedback (i.e., rejection vs. acceptance). Moderation effects were stronger when examining peer interpersonal (vs. non-interpersonal) stress and in relation to depression (vs. social anxiety) symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Neural responses to peer feedback in key social and incentive processing brain regions may reflect core dispositional risk factors that interact with peer interpersonal stressors to predict adolescent depression symptom severity over time.

Neural effects of childhood maltreatment on dynamic large-scale brain networks in major depressive disorder

Emerging evidence suggests that childhood maltreatment (CM) alters trajectories of brain development to affect network architecture and is a risk factor for the development and maintenance of depression. The current study aimed to explore the association between CM and depressive severity on the large-scale resting-state networks (RSNs) level in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and explored the network basis of clinical symptoms. 42 healthy controls without childhood maltreatment, 13 healthy controls with CM, 35 MDD without CM and 50 MDD with CM were included in the study population. Group differences in ten large-scale RSNs, associations between CM and depressive symptom dimensions and network variables were tested. And we explored whether symptom-related networks might discriminate between the four groups. We found one-versus-all-others-network showed an inverted U-shaped curve across groups. Network variables were significantly associated with Hamilton Depression Scale subscores and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire subscores. Different symptoms showed different imaging patterns, and overlapping connections of patterns had better ability to distinguish groups. Our findings suggest that CM could lead to significant changes in both network measures and connections in healthy individuals and MDD. These results deepen our understanding of the neuroimaging mechanisms of CM and MDD.

Testing effects of social rejection on aggressive and prosocial behavior: A meta-analysis

Social rejection elicits profound feelings of distress. From an evolutionary perspective, the best way to alleviate this distress is to behave prosocially, minimizing the likelihood of further exclusion. Yet, examples ranging from the playground to the pub suggest rejection commonly elicits aggression. Opposing theoretical perspectives and discordant empirical results have left a basic question unanswered: does rejection more commonly elicit prosocial or aggressive behavior? We conducted three meta-analyses (one with studies measuring aggressive behavior; one with studies measuring prosocial behavior; and one with studies measuring both aggressive and prosocial behavior; N = 3864) to quantify: (1) the extent to which social rejection elicits prosocial or aggressive behavior and (2) potential moderating effects on these relations. Random-effects models revealed medium effects such that social rejection potentiated aggressive behavior (k = 19; d = 0.41, p < .0001) and attenuated prosocial behavior (k = 7; d = 0.59, p < .0001), an effect that remained consistent even when participants were given the option to behave prosocially or aggressively (k =  15; d = 0.71, p < .0001). These results cast doubt on the theory that rejection triggers prosocial behavior, and instead suggest it is a robust elicitor of aggression. Statement of Relevance: To our knowledge, these meta-analyses are the first to directly test whether social rejection elicits aggressive or prosocial behavior. By including a comprehensive collection of both published and unpublished research studies, and examining a wide variety of previously untested moderators, we show that social rejection robustly elicits aggressive behavior and inhibits prosocial behavior. Additionally, we demonstrate that aggressive behavior following social rejection is not simply a function of limited choices in response options. In fact, aggressive behavior was evoked even when the option to engage in prosocial behavior was provided. Furthermore, we conducted a comprehensive narrative review of the neural mechanisms underlying social rejection-elicited aggressive and prosocial behavior to supplement primary analyses. Overall, we believe that our work makes a critical theoretical contribution to the field.

Borderline Personality Disorder: Updates in a Postpandemic World

Progress in understanding borderline personality disorder has unfolded in the last decade, landing in a new COVID-19-influenced world. Borderline personality disorder is now firmly established as a valid diagnosis, distinct from its co-occurring mood, anxiety, trauma-related, and behavioral disorders. Further, it is also understood as a reflection of general personality dysfunction, capturing essential features shared among all personality disorders. Neuroimaging research, representing the vast neurobiological advances made in the last decade, illustrates that the disorder shares frontolimbic dysfunction with many psychiatric diagnoses but has a distinct signature of interpersonal and emotional hypersensitivity. This signature is the conceptual basis of the psychotherapies and clinical management approaches proven effective for the disorder. Medications remain adjunctive and are contraindicated by some guidelines internationally. Less invasive brain-based therapeutics show promise. The most significant change in the treatment landscape is a focus on briefer, less intensive formats of generalist management. Shorter variants of therapies, such as dialectical behavior therapy and mentalization-based treatment, are in the process of being shown to be adequately effective. Earlier intervention and greater emphasis on functional improvement are needed to more effectively curb the disabilities and risks of borderline personality disorder for patients and their families. Remote interventions show promise in broadening access to care.

Resisting aggression in social contexts: The influence of life-course persistent antisocial behavior on behavioral and neural responses to social feedback

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Negative social feedback (vs positive / neutral) evoked more retaliatory aggression.

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Persistent and desistent antisocial development associated with similar and dissociable neural activity:

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During social feedback processing: Increased Insula (both groups) or dlPFC activation (desisters)

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During retaliation: Increased dlPFC and ACC activity after positive feedback.

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During retaliation: ACC activity correlated with inhibition of retaliation (desisters)

Early adulthood has long been recognized as a potential turning point for the development of antisocial behavior, due to changes in social contexts and ongoing psychological and neurobiological maturation. However, it remains unclear how different developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior, their neural underpinnings, and individual differences in psychopathic traits may help explain the distinct developmental outcomes of individuals who persist in or desist from antisocial behavior in early adulthood - such as how they respond to others in social contexts. Therefore, in the current study, young adults (aged 18–30, 68% male) with a persistent or desistant antisocial trajectory (N = 54), as well as healthy controls (N = 39), completed the Social Network Aggression Task, during which they received positive, neutral, or negative feedback on a personal profile and got the opportunity to retaliate by blasting a loud noise. On a behavioral level, results indicated that in all groups, negative peer feedback evoked higher retaliatory aggression, compared to positive and neutral feedback. On a neural level, when receiving social feedback, individuals with persistent or desistent trajectories showed both similar and dissociable patterns of neural activity; desisting and persisting trajectory groups showed higher activity in the Insula, and the desisting trajectory group showed higher activity in dlPFC. Finally, when participants retaliated, they showed increased dlPFC and ACC activity following positive relative to neutral and negative feedback, where ACC activity correlated most strongly with inhibition of retaliatory responses in the desisting trajectory group. Together, these findings provide novel insights in dissociable patterns of brain activity that may increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying different developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior.

Adolescents’ affective and neural responses to parental praise and criticism

Social feedback from parents has a profound impact on the development of a child’s self-concept. Yet, little is known about adolescents’ affective and neural responses to parental social feedback, such as criticism or praise. Adolescents (n = 63) received standardized social feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of appraisals about their personality (e.g., ‘respectful’, ‘lazy’) during fMRI scanning. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Additionally, adolescents had rated whether feedback words matched their self-views on an earlier occasion. In line with preregistered hypotheses, negative parental feedback worsened adolescents’ mood, which was exacerbated when feedback did not match adolescents’ self-views. Negative feedback was associated with increased activity in the neural ‘saliency network’, including anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Positive feedback improved mood and increased activity in brain regions supporting social cognition, including temporoparietal junction, posterior superior temporal sulcus, and precuneus. A more positive general self-view and perceived parental warmth were associated with elevated mood, independent of feedback valence, but did not impact neural responses. Taken together, these results enhance our understanding of adolescents’ neural circuitry involved in the processing of parental praise and criticism, and the impact of parental feedback on well-being.

The causal role of the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortices on emotion regulation of social feedback

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (VLPFC) are crucial regions involved in voluntary emotion regulation. However, the lateralization of the VLPFC in downregulating negative emotions remains unclear; and whether the causal role of the VLPFC is generalizable to upregulating positive emotions is unexplored. This study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine the causal relationship between the left/right VLPFC and social emotion reappraisal. One hundred and twenty participants were randomly assigned to either active (left and right VLPFC groups, n = 40/40) or sham (vertex, n = 40) TMS groups. Participants were instructed to passively receive social feedback or use reappraisal strategies to positively regulate their emotions. While the subjective emotional rating showed that the bilateral VLPFC facilitated the reappraisal success, the electrophysiological measure of the late positive potential (LPP) demonstrated a more critical role of the right VLPFC on social pain relief (decreased LPP amplitudes) and social reward magnification (enhanced LPP amplitudes). In addition, the influence of emotion regulation on social evaluation was found to be mediated by the memory of social feedback, indicating the importance of memory in social behavioral shaping. These findings suggest clinical protocols for the rehabilitation of emotion-regulatory function in patients with affective and social disorders.

Aberrant social feedback processing and its impact on memory, social evaluation, and decision-making among individuals with depressive symptoms

BACKGROUND

Depression is associated with aberrant social feedback processing. However, little is known about the impact of these deficits on individuals' memory, social evaluation, and social decision-making.

METHODS

We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) during the processing of social feedback with different emotional valences and intensities, among individuals with high and low depressive symptoms. After three days, participants performed a recall test, along with social evaluation and money allocation.

RESULTS

Compared with the control group, participants with depressive symptoms showed larger occipital P1 and parietal P3 amplitudes to negative social feedback, as well as larger frontal feedback-related negativity toward highly positive social feedback; this indicates toward altered attentional allocation, encoding, and anticipation in social feedback processing. After three days of social feedback processing, individuals in the depressive symptom group recalled negative social feedback better and gave less positive evaluations and allocated less money to the senders of highly negative social feedback compared with control group participants. Notably, ERPs predicted subsequent memory, social evaluation, and decision-making, suggesting a significant impact of aberrant social feedback processing on social cognition and behaviors in depression.

LIMITATIONS

Individuals with depressive symptoms rather than patients with depressive disorders were recruited and therefore caution is needed in applying the findings to clinical populations.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals with depressive symptoms exhibit negative bias in anticipation, attentional allocation, and encoding processes during social feedback processing, which further influences their memory, social evaluation, and social decision-making in the long run. These aberrant biases should be targeted to prevent the development of major depressive disorders.

I, robot: depression plays different roles in human-human and human-robot interactions

Socially engaging robots have been increasingly applied to alleviate depressive symptoms and to improve the quality of social life among different populations. Seeing that depression negatively influences social reward processing in everyday interaction, we investigate this influence during simulated interactions with humans or robots. In this study, 35 participants with mild depression and 35 controls (all from nonclinical populations) finished the social incentive delay task with event-related potential recording, in which they received performance feedback from other persons or from a robot. Compared to the controls, the mild depressive symptom (MDS) group represented abnormalities of social reward processing in the human feedback condition: first, the MDS group showed a lower hit rate and a smaller contingent-negative variation (correlated with each other) during reward anticipation; second, depression level modulated both the early phase (indexed by the feedback-related negativity (FRN)) and the late phase (indexed by the P3) of reward consumption. In contrast, the effect of depression was evident only on FRN amplitude in the robot feedback condition. We suggest that compared to human-human interaction, the rewarding properties of human-robot interaction are less likely to be affected by depression. These findings have implications for the utilization of robot-assisted intervention in clinical practice.

Infective Messages: Definitions, Processes, and Implications for Trauma, Identities, Internal Conflicts, Psychotherapy, and Research

BACKGROUND

Throughout life, individuals are bombarded by countless emotion-generating messages. Certain of these messages, for example, some insults, admonitions, rejections, challenges, or insightful declarations, can be viewed as "infective." Infective messages shock, puncture, adhere, disturb, and generate discernable host responses that assimilate, accommodate, or repel the intruding messages. Messages originating in one's own mind can stimulate psychological equivalents of autoimmune responses. Sometimes, these messages produce enduring psychological changes. Infective messages may traumatize, organize, or therapize. The aims of this article are to consider how infective messages a) relate to their messengers (vectors), structural characteristics, and recipient (host) factors; b) might contribute to trauma, personal identity formation, psychological conflicts, and emotional self-regulatory and cognitive heuristics; c) might inform the conduct of psychotherapy; and d) suggest future research.

METHODS

Clinical observations were augmented with selective literature reviews. These sources contributed to perspectives regarding how certain messages might become infective; contribute to trauma, complex aspects of identity formation, and inner conflict; and inform the conduct of psychotherapy.

RESULTS

Infective messages are commonly characterized by short, cogent communications emanating from credible sources that fall on vulnerable recipients' receptive, dispositional feeling states. These infective stimuli trigger reactive and defensive emotions and associated behaviors reflecting responses to significant threats or benefits relative to the individual's deepest needs, motivations, and values. Defensive overreactions may occur in response to messages to which individuals have been previously sensitized. Infective message contents appear to assimilate into constantly evolving, dynamic autobiographical brain maps consisting of highly specific neuronal networks that range from the brainstem through limbic structures to multiple cortical areas. Autobiographical maps built from message-injected contents may transform, akin to the incorporation of retroviruses or prions, to encode personal identities as aspects of the self. Contrasting maps may exist semi-independently of one another, continuously evolving, interacting, combining, dividing, conflicting, and contending with one another for attention. Achieving attentional awareness, such maps help structure how individuals conceptualize and communicate about their encoded traumas, diverse identities, and the conflicts among them.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

During psychotherapy, aftereffects of traumatizing infective messages might be detoxified by deconstructing, desensitizing, and processing messages' precise words and emotional envelopes in relation to contexts in which they were delivered, and the individual's inner dispositions at moments of impact. Carefully crafted, timely interpretations can be therapeutically infective, generating enduring positive impacts. Future studies using an assortment of approaches can test these perspectives.

Forgetting positive social feedback is difficult: ERP evidence in a directed forgetting paradigm

Voluntary forgetting of unwanted memories is an adaptive cognitive function. However, it remains unknown how voluntary forgetting of unwanted social feedback may influence subsequent memories and evaluations, and what the underlying neurocognitive processes are. Here, we presented participants with peer photos together with feedback indicating social acceptance or rejection, followed by "remember" or "forget" instructive cues, while electroencephalograms were recorded during the experiment. We examined the Directed Forgetting (DF) effect in a recognition memory test, and tested participants' explicit and implicit attitudes toward the peers using a social evaluation task and an affect misattribution procedure (AMP). Both the memory test and the AMP were examined immediately and 3 days after the DF task so to estimate both the instant and the long-term effects of memory control. Behaviorally, immediate memory test showed smaller DF effect for positive than negative social feedback, which suggests that forgetting positive social feedback was more difficult than forgetting negative social feedback. Regarding the ERP results, although participants showed comparable frontal N2 amplitudes (reflecting inhibitory control efforts) following the instruction of forgetting positive and negative social feedback, positive feedback elicited larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes than negative feedback during initial encoding phase, suggesting an encoding bias for positive self-relevant information. Intriguingly, voluntary efforts to forget negative social feedback enhanced people's explicit and implicit evaluations toward the feedback senders. These findings provide new evidence for the adaptive function of memory control, which broadens the influence of voluntary forgetting in the context of social interaction and social evaluation.