Dissociation between emotion and personality judgments: Convergent evidence from functional neuroimaging

Brain mechanisms involved in the perception of emotional gait: A combined magnetoencephalography and virtual reality study

Brain processes associated with emotion perception from biological motion have been largely investigated using point-light displays that are devoid of pictorial information and not representative of everyday life. In this study, we investigated the brain signals evoked when perceiving emotions arising from body movements of virtual pedestrians walking in a community environment. Magnetoencephalography was used to record brain activation in 21 healthy young adults discriminating the emotional gaits (neutral, angry, happy) of virtual male/female pedestrians. Event-related responses in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), fusiform body area (FBA), extrastriate body area (EBA), amygdala (AMG), and lateral occipital cortex (Occ) were examined. Brain signals were characterized by an early positive peak (P1;∼200ms) and a late positive potential component (LPP) comprising of an early (400-600ms), middle (600-1000ms) and late phase (1000-1500ms). Generalized estimating equations revealed that P1 amplitude was unaffected by emotion and gender of pedestrians. LPP amplitude showed a significant emotion X phase interaction in all regions of interest, revealing i) an emotion-dependent modulation starting in pSTS and Occ, followed by AMG, FBA and EBA, and ii) generally enhanced responses for angry vs. other gait stimuli in the middle LPP phase. LPP also showed a gender X phase interaction in pSTS and Occ, as gender affected the time course of the response to emotional gait. Present findings show that brain activation within areas associated with biological motion, form, and emotion processing is modulated by emotional gait stimuli rendered by virtual simulations representative of everyday life.

Patterns of neural activity in response to threatening faces are predictive of autistic traits: modulatory effects of oxytocin receptor genotype

Autistic individuals generally demonstrate impaired emotion recognition but it is unclear whether effects are emotion-specific or influenced by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype. Here we implemented a dimensional approach using an implicit emotion recognition task together with functional MRI in a large cohort of neurotypical adult participants (N = 255, male = 131, aged 17-29 years) to establish associations between autistic traits and neural and behavioral responses to specific face emotions, together with modulatory effects of OXTR genotype. A searchlight-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) revealed an extensive network of frontal, basal ganglia, cingulate and limbic regions exhibiting significant predictability for autistic traits from patterns of responses to angry relative to neutral expression faces. Functional connectivity analyses revealed a genotype interaction (OXTR SNPs rs2254298, rs2268491) for coupling between the orbitofrontal cortex and mid-cingulate during angry expression processing, with a negative association between coupling and autistic traits in the risk-allele group and a positive one in the non-risk allele group. Overall, results indicate extensive emotion-specific associations primarily between patterns of neural responses to angry faces and autistic traits in regions processing motivation, reward and salience but not in early visual processing. Functional connections between these identified regions were not only associated with autistic traits but also influenced by OXTR genotype. Thus, altered patterns of neural responses to threatening faces may be a potential biomarker for autistic symptoms although modulatory influences of OXTR genotype need to be taken into account.

The Role of the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus in Introspection during Verbal Communication

Conversation enables the sharing of our subjective experiences through verbalizing introspected thoughts and feelings. The mentalizing network represents introspection, and successful conversation is characterized by alignment through imitation mediated by the mirror neuron system (MNS). Therefore, we hypothesized that the interaction between the mentalizing network and MNS mediates the conversational exchange of introspection. To test this, we performed hyperscanning functional magnetic resonance imaging during structured real-time conversations between 19 pairs of healthy participants. The participants first evaluated their preference for and familiarity with a presented object and then disclosed it. The control was the object feature identification task. When contrasted with the control, the preference/familiarity evaluation phase activated the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, left hippocampus, right cerebellum, and orbital portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which represents introspection. The left IFG was activated when the two participants' statements of introspection were mismatched during the disclosure. Disclosing introspection enhanced the functional connectivity of the left IFG with the bilateral superior temporal gyrus and primary motor cortex, representing the auditory MNS. Thus, the mentalizing system and MNS are hierarchically linked in the left IFG during a conversation, allowing for the sharing of introspection of the self and others.

Sleep loss leads to the withdrawal of human helping across individuals, groups, and large-scale societies

Humans help each other. This fundamental feature of homo sapiens has been one of the most powerful forces sculpting the advent of modern civilizations. But what determines whether humans choose to help one another? Across 3 replicating studies, here, we demonstrate that sleep loss represents one previously unrecognized factor dictating whether humans choose to help each other, observed at 3 different scales (within individuals, across individuals, and across societies). First, at an individual level, 1 night of sleep loss triggers the withdrawal of help from one individual to another. Moreover, fMRI findings revealed that the withdrawal of human helping is associated with deactivation of key nodes within the social cognition brain network that facilitates prosociality. Second, at a group level, ecological night-to-night reductions in sleep across several nights predict corresponding next-day reductions in the choice to help others during day-to-day interactions. Third, at a large-scale national level, we demonstrate that 1 h of lost sleep opportunity, inflicted by the transition to Daylight Saving Time, reduces real-world altruistic helping through the act of donation giving, established through the analysis of over 3 million charitable donations. Therefore, inadequate sleep represents a significant influential force determining whether humans choose to help one another, observable across micro- and macroscopic levels of civilized interaction. The implications of this effect may be non-trivial when considering the essentiality of human helping in the maintenance of cooperative, civil society, combined with the reported decline in sufficient sleep in many first-world nations.

Can Empathy Help Individuals and Society? Through the Lens of Volunteering and Mental Health

(1) Background: Empathy affects an individual’s decision to participate in volunteering, and volunteering, in turn, influences mental health. Intriguingly, studies have been limited in exploring underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions for the relationship between empathy and mental health. Furthermore, volunteering studies have overlooked the multi-dimensionality of empathy. Therefore, this study seeks to contribute to extant literature by investigating the mediating effect of volunteering for the relationships between cognitive and affective empathy and mental health and the moderating effect of gender for the relationship between empathy and volunteering. (2) Methods; Data were collected using a survey in South Korea and consisted of 301 full-time employees who voluntarily engaged in their corporate volunteer programs. Furthermore, they voluntarily participated in the study. The hypotheses were tested with path analysis and a group comparison was also conducted. (3) Results: Volunteering was found to mediate the relationships between cognitive empathy and affective empathy with mental health. In addition, gender moderated the relationship between empathy and volunteering. (4) Conclusions: As the study found empathy to increase individuals’ engaging in volunteering activities which then improved mental health, the study supports extant theoretical frameworks on empathy and volunteering. Moreover, the study found gender differences on empathy and volunteering; thereby supporting and contributing to extant literature.

Large-scale network dysfunction in the acute state compared to the remitted state of bipolar disorder: A meta-analysis of resting-state functional connectivity

Background

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a mental disorder characterized by mood fluctuations between an acute episodic state of either mania or depression and a clinically remitted state. Dysfunction of large-scale intrinsic brain networks has been demonstrated in this disorder, but it remains unknown whether those network alterations are related to different states.

Methods

In the present study, we performed a meta-analysis of whole-brain seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) studies in BD patients to compare the intrinsic function of brain networks between episodic and remitted states. Thirty-nine seed-based voxel-wise rsFC datasets from thirty publications (1047 BD patients vs 1081 controls) were included in the meta-analysis. Seeds were categorized into networks by their locations within a priori functional networks. Seed-based d mapping analysis of between-state effects identified brain systems in which different states were associated with increased connectivity or decreased connectivity within and between each seed network.

Findings

We found that BD patients presented decreased connectivity within the affective network (AN) in acute episodes but not in the remitted state of the illness. Similar decreased connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) was also found in the acute state, but it was replaced by increased connectivity in the remitted state. In addition, different patterns of between-network dysconnectivity were observed between the acute and remitted states.

Interpretation

This study is the first to identify different patterns of intrinsic function in large-scale brain networks between the acute and remitted states of BD through meta-analysis. The findings suggest that a shift in network function between the acute and remitted states may be related to distinct emotional and cognitive dysfunctions in BD, which may have important implications for identifying clinically relevant biomarkers to guide alternative treatment strategies for BD patients during active episodes or remission.

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81171488, 81671669 and 81820108018) and by a Sichuan Provincial Youth Grant (2017JQ0001).

Visual attention, biological motion perception, and healthy ageing

Biological motion perception is the ability of the visual system to perceive complex human movement patterns. The previous studies have shown a direct link between attentional abilities and performance on biological motion tasks, both of which have been shown to deteriorate with age. However, it is not known whether there is a direct link between age-related deficits in biological motion processing and attention. Here, we investigated whether age-related changes in biological motion perception are mediated by impaired attentional abilities. To assess basic biological motion performance, we asked 42 younger (M = 21 years) and 39 older adults (M = 69 years) to indicate the facing direction of point-light actions. Performance did not differ between age groups. We assessed visual spatial and selective attentional abilities, using a range of tasks: conjunctive visual search, spatial cueing, and the Stroop task. Across all tasks, older adults were significantly slower to respond and exhibited larger interference/cueing effects, compared to younger adults. To assess attentional demands in relation with biological motion perception, participants performed a biological motion search task for which they had to indicate the presence of a target point-light walker among a varied number of distracters. Older adults were slower, and generally worse than younger adults at discriminating the walkers. Correlations showed that there was no significant relationship between performance in attention tasks and biological motion processing, which indicates that age-related changes in biological motion perception are unlikely to be driven by general attentional decline.

Expanding Simulation Models of Emotional Understanding: The Case for Different Modalities, Body-State Simulation Prominence, and Developmental Trajectories

Recent models of emotion recognition suggest that when people perceive an emotional expression, they partially activate the respective emotion in themselves, providing a basis for the recognition of that emotion. Much of the focus of these models and of their evidential basis has been on sensorimotor simulation as a basis for facial expression recognition - the idea, in short, that coming to know what another feels involves simulating in your brain the motor plans and associated sensory representations engaged by the other person's brain in producing the facial expression that you see. In this review article, we argue that simulation accounts of emotion recognition would benefit from three key extensions. First, that fuller consideration be given to simulation of bodily and vocal expressions, given that the body and voice are also important expressive channels for providing cues to another's emotional state. Second, that simulation of other aspects of the perceived emotional state, such as changes in the autonomic nervous system and viscera, might have a more prominent role in underpinning emotion recognition than is typically proposed. Sensorimotor simulation models tend to relegate such body-state simulation to a subsidiary role, despite the plausibility of body-state simulation being able to underpin emotion recognition in the absence of typical sensorimotor simulation. Third, that simulation models of emotion recognition be extended to address how embodied processes and emotion recognition abilities develop through the lifespan. It is not currently clear how this system of sensorimotor and body-state simulation develops and in particular how this affects the development of emotion recognition ability. We review recent findings from the emotional body recognition literature and integrate recent evidence regarding the development of mimicry and interoception to significantly expand simulation models of emotion recognition.

Human chemosignals modulate emotional perception of biological motion in a sex-specific manner

Androsta-4,16,-dien-3-one and estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol have previously been shown to communicate opposite sex information that is differently effective to the two sex groups. The current study critically examines if the two human steroids could facilitate interactions with potential mates rather than competitors by acting on the recipients' emotional perception in a sex-appropriate manner. Using dynamic point-light displays that portray the gaits of walkers whose emotional states are digitally morphed along the valence and the arousal axes, we show that smelling androstadienone subconsciously biases heterosexual women, but not men, towards perceiving the male, but not female, walkers as happier and more relaxed. By contrast, smelling estratetraenol subconsciously biases heterosexual men, but not women, towards perceiving the female, but not male, walkers as happier and more relaxed. These findings indicate that androstadienone and estratetraenol prime the identification of emotionally receptive states for the potential mates with whom they are associated, in manners contingent upon not only the recipients' own sex but also their sex perception of other individuals that ensure sex-appropriate behavior.

Structural and effective brain connectivity underlying biological motion detection

The perception of actions underwrites a wide range of socio-cognitive functions. Previous neuroimaging and lesion studies identified several components of the brain network for visual biological motion (BM) processing, but interactions among these components and their relationship to behavior remain little understood. Here, using a recently developed integrative analysis of structural and effective connectivity derived from high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assess the cerebro-cerebellar network for processing of camouflaged point-light BM. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) informed by probabilistic tractography indicates that the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) serves as an integrator within the temporal module. However, the STS does not appear to be a "gatekeeper" in the functional integration of the occipito-temporal and frontal regions: The fusiform gyrus (FFG) and middle temporal cortex (MTC) are also connected to the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and insula, indicating multiple parallel pathways. BM-specific loops of effective connectivity are seen between the left lateral cerebellar lobule Crus I and right STS, as well as between the left Crus I and right insula. The prevalence of a structural pathway between the FFG and STS is associated with better BM detection. Moreover, a canonical variate analysis shows that the visual sensitivity to BM is best predicted by BM-specific effective connectivity from the FFG to STS and from the IFG, insula, and STS to the early visual cortex. Overall, the study characterizes the architecture of the cerebro-cerebellar network for BM processing and offers prospects for assessing the social brain.

Neural Underpinnings of the Perception of Emotional States Derived From Biological Human Motion: A Review of Neuroimaging Research

Research on the perception of biological human motion shows that people are able to infer emotional states by observing body movements. This article reviews the methodology applied in fMRI research on the neural representation of such emotion perception. Specifically, we ask how different stimulus qualities of bodily expressions, individual emotional valence, and task instructions may affect the neural representation of an emotional scene. The review demonstrates the involvement of a variety of brain areas, thereby indicating how well the human brain is adjusted to navigate in multiple social situations. All stimulus categories (i.e., full-light body displays, point-light displays, and avatars) can induce an emotional percept and are associated with increased activation in an extensive neural network. This network seems to be organized around areas belonging to the so-called action observation network (PMC, IFG, and IPL) and the mentalizing network (TPJ, TP, dmPFC, and lOFC) as well as areas processing body form and motion (e.g., EBA, FBA, and pSTS). Furthermore, emotion-processing brain sites such as the amygdala and the hypothalamus seem to play an important role during the observation of emotional body expressions. Whereas most brain regions clearly display an increased response to emotional body movements in general, some structures respond selectively to negative valence. Moreover, neural activation seems to depend on task characteristics, indicating that certain structures are activated even when attention is shifted away from emotional body movements.

Neural networks underlying language and social cognition during self-other processing in Autism spectrum disorders

The social communication impairments defining autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may be built upon core deficits in perspective-taking, language processing, and self-other representation. Self-referential processing entails the ability to incorporate self-awareness, self-judgment, and self-memory in information processing. Very few studies have examined the neural bases of integrating self-other representation and semantic processing in individuals with ASD. The main objective of this functional MRI study is to examine the role of language and social brain networks in self-other processing in young adults with ASD. Nineteen high-functioning male adults with ASD and 19 age-sex-and-IQ-matched typically developing (TD) control participants made "yes" or "no" judgments of whether an adjective, presented visually, described them (self) or their favorite teacher (other). Both ASD and TD participants showed significantly increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) during self and other processing relative to letter search. Analyses of group differences revealed significantly reduced activity in left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), and left inferior parietal lobule (LIPL) in ASD participants, relative to TD controls. ASD participants also showed significantly weaker functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) with several brain areas while processing self-related words. The LIFG and IPL are important regions functionally at the intersection of language and social roles; reduced recruitment of these regions in ASD participants may suggest poor level of semantic and social processing. In addition, poor connectivity of the ACC may suggest the difficulty in meeting the linguistic and social demands of this task in ASD. Overall, this study provides new evidence of the altered recruitment of the neural networks underlying language and social cognition in ASD.

The Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence: Principles and Updates

This article presents seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new. We have reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles, clarified earlier statements of the model that were unclear, and revised portions of it in response to current research. In this revision, we also positioned emotional intelligence amidst other hot intelligences including personal and social intelligences, and examined the implications of the changes to the model. We discuss the present and future of the concept of emotional intelligence as a mental ability.

Global form and motion processing in healthy ageing

The ability to perceive biological motion has been shown to deteriorate with age, and it is assumed that older adults rely more on the global form than local motion information when processing point-light walkers. Further, it has been suggested that biological motion processing in ageing is related to a form-based global processing bias. Here, we investigated the relationship between older adults' preference for form information when processing point-light actions and an age-related form-based global processing bias. In a first task, we asked older (>60years) and younger adults (19-23years) to sequentially match three different point-light actions; normal actions that contained local motion and global form information, scrambled actions that contained primarily local motion information, and random-position actions that contained primarily global form information. Both age groups overall performed above chance in all three conditions, and were more accurate for actions that contained global form information. For random-position actions, older adults were less accurate than younger adults but there was no age-difference for normal or scrambled actions. These results indicate that both age groups rely more on global form than local motion to match point-light actions, but can use local motion on its own to match point-light actions. In a second task, we investigated form-based global processing biases using the Navon task. In general, participants were better at discriminating the local letters but faster at discriminating global letters. Correlations showed that there was no significant linear relationship between performance in the Navon task and biological motion processing, which suggests that processing biases in form- and motion-based tasks are unrelated.

Putting the face in context: Body expressions impact facial emotion processing in human infants

•

Brain responses were measured by presenting emotional faces in the context of emotional bodies.

•

ERP data showed that 8-month-old infants discriminate between facial expressions only when presented in the context of congruent body expressions.

•

Neural evidence for the existence of context-sensitive facial emotion perception in infants.

Body expressions exert strong contextual effects on facial emotion perception in adults. Specifically, conflicting body cues hamper the recognition of emotion from faces, as evident on both the behavioral and neural level. We examined the developmental origins of the neural processes involved in emotion perception across body and face in 8-month-old infants by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs). We primed infants with body postures (fearful, happy) that were followed by either congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Our results revealed that body expressions impact facial emotion processing and that incongruent body cues impair the neural discrimination of emotional facial expressions. Priming effects were associated with attentional and recognition memory processes, as reflected in a modulation of the Nc and Pc evoked at anterior electrodes. These findings demonstrate that 8-month-old infants possess neural mechanisms that allow for the integration of emotion across body and face, providing evidence for the early developmental emergence of context-sensitive facial emotion perception.

Duration of exclusive breastfeeding is associated with differences in infants' brain responses to emotional body expressions

Much research has recognized the general importance of maternal behavior in the early development and programing of the mammalian offspring's brain. Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) duration, the amount of time in which breastfed meals are the only source of sustenance, plays a prominent role in promoting healthy brain and cognitive development in human children. However, surprisingly little is known about the influence of breastfeeding on social and emotional development in infancy. In the current study, we examined whether and how the duration of EBF impacts the neural processing of emotional signals by measuring electro-cortical responses to body expressions in 8-month-old infants. Our analyses revealed that infants with high EBF experience show a significantly greater neural sensitivity to happy body expressions than those with low EBF experience. Moreover, regression analyses revealed that the neural bias toward happiness or fearfulness differs as a function of the duration of EBF. Specifically, longer breastfeeding duration is associated with a happy bias, whereas shorter breastfeeding duration is associated with a fear bias. These findings suggest that breastfeeding experience can shape the way in which infants respond to emotional signals.

Empathy: A Review of the Concept

The inconsistent definition of empathy has had a negative impact on both research and practice. The aim of this article is to review and critically appraise a range of definitions of empathy and, through considered analysis, to develop a new conceptualisation. From the examination of 43 discrete definitions, 8 themes relating to the nature of empathy emerged: “distinguishing empathy from other concepts”; “cognitive or affective?”; “congruent or incongruent?”; “subject to other stimuli?”; “self/other distinction or merging?”; “trait or state influences?”; “has a behavioural outcome?”; and “automatic or controlled?” The relevance and validity of each theme is assessed and a new conceptualisation of empathy is offered. The benefits of employing a more consistent and complete definition of empathy are discussed.

Social trait judgment and affect recognition from static faces and video vignettes in schizophrenia

Social impairment is a core feature of schizophrenia, present from the pre-morbid stage and predictive of outcome, but the etiology of this deficit remains poorly understood. Successful and adaptive social interactions depend on one's ability to make rapid and accurate judgments about others in real time. Our surprising ability to form accurate first impressions from brief exposures, known as "thin slices" of behavior has been studied very extensively in healthy participants. We sought to examine affect and social trait judgment from thin slices of static or video stimuli in order to investigate the ability of schizophrenic individuals to form reliable social impressions of others. 21 individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and 20 matched healthy participants (HC) were asked to identify emotions and social traits for actors in standardized face stimuli as well as brief video clips. Sound was removed from videos to remove all verbal cues. Clinical symptoms in SZ and delusional ideation in both groups were measured. Results showed a general impairment in affect recognition for both types of stimuli in SZ. However, the two groups did not differ in the judgments of trustworthiness, approachability, attractiveness, and intelligence. Interestingly, in SZ, the severity of positive symptoms was correlated with higher ratings of attractiveness, trustworthiness, and approachability. Finally, increased delusional ideation in SZ was associated with a tendency to rate others as more trustworthy, while the opposite was true for HC. These findings suggest that complex social judgments in SZ are affected by symptomatology.

Discrimination of fearful and happy body postures in 8-month-old infants: an event-related potential study

Responding to others' emotional body expressions is an essential social skill in humans. Adults readily detect emotions from body postures, but it is unclear whether infants are sensitive to emotional body postures. We examined 8-month-old infants' brain responses to emotional body postures by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) to happy and fearful bodies. Our results revealed two emotion-sensitive ERP components: body postures evoked an early N290 at occipital electrodes and a later Nc at fronto-central electrodes that were enhanced in response to fearful (relative to happy) expressions. These findings demonstrate that: (a) 8-month-old infants discriminate between static emotional body postures; and (b) similar to infant emotional face perception, the sensitivity to emotional body postures is reflected in early perceptual (N290) and later attentional (Nc) neural processes. This provides evidence for an early developmental emergence of the neural processes involved in the discrimination of emotional body postures.

Tuning the developing brain to emotional body expressions

Reading others' emotional body expressions is an essential social skill. Adults readily recognize emotions from body movements. However, it is unclear when in development infants become sensitive to bodily expressed emotions. We examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in 4- and 8-month-old infants in response to point-light displays (PLDs) of happy and fearful body expressions presented in two orientations (upright and inverted). The ERP results revealed that 8-month-olds but not 4-month-olds respond sensitively to the orientation and the emotion of the dynamic expressions. Specifically, 8-month-olds showed (i) an early (200-400 ms) orientation-sensitive positivity over frontal and central electrodes, and (ii) a late (700-1100 ms) emotion-sensitive positivity over temporal and parietal electrodes in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that orientation-sensitive and emotion-sensitive brain processes, distinct in timing and topography, develop between 4 and 8 months of age.

Distinct regions of prefrontal cortex are associated with the controlled retrieval and selection of social information

Research in social neuroscience has uncovered a social knowledge network that is particularly attuned to making social judgments. However, the processes that are being performed by both regions within this network and those outside of this network that are nevertheless engaged in the service of making a social judgment remain unclear. To help address this, we drew upon research in semantic memory, which suggests that making a semantic judgment engages 2 distinct control processes: A controlled retrieval process, which aids in bringing goal-relevant information to mind from long-term stores, and a selection process, which aids in selecting the information that is goal-relevant from the information retrieved. In a neuroimaging study, we investigated whether controlled retrieval and selection for social information engage distinct portions of both the social knowledge network and regions outside this network. Controlled retrieval for social information engaged an anterior ventrolateral portion of the prefrontal cortex, whereas selection engaged both the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction within the social knowledge network. These results suggest that the social knowledge network may be more involved with the selection of social information than the controlled retrieval of it and incorporates lateral prefrontal regions in accessing memory for making social judgments.

Proficiency in positive vs. negative emotion identification and subjective well-being among long-term married elderly couples

Evidence is accruing that positive emotions play a crucial role in shaping a healthy interpersonal climate. Inspired by this research, the current investigation sought to shed light on the link between proficiency in identifying positive vs. negative emotions and a close partner's well-being. To this end, we conducted two studies with neurologically intact elderly married couples (Study 1) and an age-matched clinical sample, comprising married couples in which one spouse had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (Study 2), which tends to hinder emotional expressivity. To assess proficiency in identifying emotions from whole body postures, we had participants in both studies complete a pointlight walker task, featuring four actors (two male, two female) expressing one positive (i.e., happiness) and three negative (i.e., sadness, anger, fear) basic emotions. Participants also filled out measures of subjective well-being. Among Study 1's neurologically intact spouses, greater expertise in identifying positive (but not negative) emotions was linked to greater partner life satisfaction (but not hedonic balance). Spouses of PD patients exhibited increased proficiency in identifying positive emotions relative to controls, possibly reflective of compensatory mechanisms. Complementarily, relative to controls, spouses of PD patients exhibited reduced proficiency in identifying negative emotions and a tendency to underestimate their intensity. Importantly, all of these effects attenuated with longer years from PD onset. Finally, there was evidence that it was increased partner expertise in identifying negative (rather than positive) emotional states that predicted greater life satisfaction levels among the PD patients and their spouses. Our results thus suggest that positive vs. negative emotions may play distinct roles in close relationship dynamics as a function of neurological status and disability trajectory.

Adapting social neuroscience measures for schizophrenia clinical trials, Part 1: ferrying paradigms across perilous waters

Social cognitive impairment is prominent in schizophrenia, and it is closely related to functional outcome. Partly for these reasons, it has rapidly become a target for both training and psychopharmacological interventions. However, there is a paucity of reliable and valid social cognitive endpoints that can be used to evaluate treatment response in clinical trials. Also, clinical studies in schizophrenia have benefited rather little from the surge of activity and knowledge in nonclinical social neuroscience. The National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored study, "Social Cognition and Functioning in Schizophrenia" (SCAF), attempted to address this translational challenge by selecting paradigms from social neuroscience that could be adapted for use in schizophrenia. The project also evaluated the psychometric properties and external validity of the tasks to determine their suitability for multisite clinical trials. This first article in the theme section presents the goals, conceptual background, and rationale for the SCAF project.

Social cognition and the cerebellum: a meta-analysis of over 350 fMRI studies

This meta-analysis explores the role of the cerebellum in social cognition. Recent meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies since 2008 demonstrate that the cerebellum is only marginally involved in social cognition and emotionality, with a few meta-analyses pointing to an involvement of at most 54% of the individual studies. In this study, novel meta-analyses of over 350 fMRI studies, dividing up the domain of social cognition in homogeneous subdomains, confirmed this low involvement of the cerebellum in conditions that trigger the mirror network (e.g., when familiar movements of body parts are observed) and the mentalizing network (when no moving body parts or unfamiliar movements are present). There is, however, one set of mentalizing conditions that strongly involve the cerebellum in 50-100% of the individual studies. In particular, when the level of abstraction is high, such as when behaviors are described in terms of traits or permanent characteristics, in terms of groups rather than individuals, in terms of the past (episodic autobiographic memory) or the future rather than the present, or in terms of hypothetical events that may happen. An activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis conducted in this study reveals that the cerebellum is critically implicated in social cognition and that the areas of the cerebellum which are consistently involved in social cognitive processes show extensive overlap with the areas involved in sensorimotor (during mirror and self-judgments tasks) as well as in executive functioning (across all tasks). We discuss the role of the cerebellum in social cognition in general and in higher abstraction mentalizing in particular. We also point out a number of methodological limitations of some available studies on the social brain that hamper the detection of cerebellar activity.

Recognition of emotion from body language among patients with unipolar depression

Major depression may be associated with abnormal perception of emotions and impairment in social adaptation. Emotion recognition from body language and its possible implications to social adjustment have not been examined in patients with depression. Three groups of participants (51 with depression; 68 with history of depression in remission; and 69 never depressed healthy volunteers) were compared on static and dynamic tasks of emotion recognition from body language. Psychosocial adjustment was assessed using the Social Adjustment Scale Self-Report (SAS-SR). Participants with current depression showed reduced recognition accuracy for happy stimuli across tasks relative to remission and comparison participants. Participants with depression tended to show poorer psychosocial adaptation relative to remission and comparison groups. Correlations between perception accuracy of happiness and scores on the SAS-SR were largely not significant. These results indicate that depression is associated with reduced ability to appraise positive stimuli of emotional body language but emotion recognition performance is not tied to social adjustment. These alterations do not appear to be present in participants in remission suggesting state-like qualities.

Affect and the brain's functional organization: a resting-state connectivity approach

The question of how affective processing is organized in the brain is still a matter of controversial discussions. Based on previous initial evidence, several suggestions have been put forward regarding the involved brain areas: (a) right-lateralized dominance in emotional processing, (b) hemispheric dominance according to positive or negative valence, (c) one network for all emotional processing and (d) region-specific discrete emotion matching. We examined these hypotheses by investigating intrinsic functional connectivity patterns that covary with results of the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule (PANAS) from 65 participants. This approach has the advantage of being able to test connectivity rather than activation, and not requiring a potentially confounding task. Voxelwise functional connectivity from 200 regions-of-interest covering the whole brain was assessed. Positive and negative affect covaried with functional connectivity involving a shared set of regions, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, the visual cortex and the cerebellum. In addition, each affective domain had unique connectivity patterns, and the lateralization index showed a right hemispheric dominance for negative affect. Therefore, our results suggest a predominantly right-hemispheric network with affect-specific elements as the underlying organization of emotional processes.

Regional cerebral blood flow abnormalities associated with apathy and depression in Alzheimer disease

The aim of this study was to identify brain areas related to apathy or depression in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). Eighty-one AD patients were enrolled in this prospective study. (99m)Tc-HMPAO single photon emission computed tomography was performed to evaluate regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). According to the Neuropsychiatric Inventory subscores of apathy and depression, 9 patients were classified as clinically significant (cs) depressed and non-cs-apathetic (D+) groups and 9 were classified as cs-apathetic and non-cs-depressed (A+) groups. In addition, 18 patients were classified as age-matched and Mini-Mental State Examination-matched disease control groups (D-, A-). The significance of rCBF differences between groups and the correlation between rCBF and subscores in 81 AD patients were estimated by SPM (uncorrected P < 0.005) analysis. D+ patients had significantly lower perfusion in the right orbitofrontal and inferior frontal gyri than D- patients, whereas A+ patients had this in the right amygdala, temporal, posterior cingulate, right superior frontal, postcentral, and left superior temporal gyri than A- patients. The negatively correlated areas with depression subscores included the left inferior frontal and the right middle frontal gyri and those with apathy subscores included the right temporal and right medial frontal gyri. We suggest that this finding may indicate that apathy and depression in AD patients involve distinct functional circuits.

Social working memory: neurocognitive networks and directions for future research

Navigating the social world requires the ability to maintain and manipulate information about people's beliefs, traits, and mental states. We characterize this capacity as social working memory (SWM). To date, very little research has explored this phenomenon, in part because of the assumption that general working memory systems would support working memory for social information. Various lines of research, however, suggest that social cognitive processing relies on a neurocognitive network (i.e., the "mentalizing network") that is functionally distinct from, and considered antagonistic with, the canonical working memory network. Here, we review evidence suggesting that demanding social cognition requires SWM and that both the mentalizing and canonical working memory neurocognitive networks support SWM. The neural data run counter to the common finding of parametric decreases in mentalizing regions as a function of working memory demand and suggest that the mentalizing network can support demanding cognition, when it is demanding social cognition. Implications for individual differences in social cognition and pathologies of social cognition are discussed.

Remembering first impressions: effects of intentionality and diagnosticity on subsequent memory

People rely on first impressions every day as an important tool to interpret social behavior. While research is beginning to reveal the neural underpinnings of first impressions, particularly through understanding the role of dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), little is known about the way in which first impressions are encoded into memory. This is surprising because first impressions are relevant from a social perspective for future interactions, requiring that they be transferred to memory. The present study used a subsequent-memory paradigm to test the conditions under which the dmPFC is implicated in the encoding of first impressions. We found that intentionally forming impressions engages the dmPFC more than does incidentally forming impressions, and that this engagement supports the encoding of remembered impressions. In addition, we found that diagnostic information, which more readily lends itself to forming trait impressions, engages the dmPFC more than does neutral information. These results indicate that the neural system subserving memory for impressions is sensitive to consciously formed impressions. The results also suggest a distinction between a social memory system and other explicit memory systems governed by the medial temporal lobes.

Understanding grapheme personification: a social synaesthesia?

Much of synaesthesia research focused on colour, but not all cross-domain correspondences reported by synaesthetes are strictly sensory. For example, some synaesthetes personify letters and numbers, in additional to visualizing them in colour. First reported in the 1890s, the phenomenon has been largely ignored by scientists for more than a century with the exception of a few single-case reports. In the present study, we collected detailed self-reports on grapheme personification using a questionnaire, providing us with a comprehensive description of the phenomenology of grapheme personification. Next, we documented the behavioural consequences of personifying graphemes using a congruity paradigm involving a gender judgement task; we also examined whether personification is associated with heightened empathy as measured using Empathy Quotient and found substantial individual differences within our sample. Lastly, we present the first neuroimaging case study of personification, indicating that the precuneus activation previously seen in other synaesthesia studies may be implicated in the process. We propose that frameworks for understanding synaesthesia could be extended into other domains of cognition and that grapheme personification shares more in common with normal cognition than may be readily apparent. This benign form of hyper-mentalizing may provide a unique point of view on one of the most central problems in human cognition - understanding others' state of mind.

Modulation of the face- and body-selective visual regions by the motion and emotion of point-light face and body stimuli

Neural regions selective for facial or bodily form also respond to facial or bodily motion in highly form-degraded point-light displays. Yet it is unknown whether these face-selective and body-selective regions are sensitive to human motion regardless of stimulus type (faces and bodies) or to the specific motion-related cues characteristic of their proprietary stimulus categories. Using fMRI, we show that facial and bodily motions activate selectively those populations of neurons that code for the static structure of faces and bodies. Bodily (vs. facial) motion activated body-selective EBA bilaterally and right but not left FBA, irrespective of whether observers judged the emotion or color-change in point-light angry, happy and neutral stimuli. Facial (vs. bodily) motion activated face-selective right and left FFA, but only during emotion judgments for right FFA. Moreover, the strength of responses to point-light bodies vs. faces positively correlated with voxelwise selectivity for static bodies but not faces, whereas the strength of responses to point-light faces positively correlated with voxelwise selectivity for static faces but not bodies. Emotional content carried by point-light form-from-motion cues was sufficient to enhance the activity of several regions, including bilateral EBA and right FFA and FBA. However, although the strength of emotional modulation in right and left EBA by point-light body movements was related to the degree of voxelwise selectivity to static bodies but not static faces, there was no evidence that emotional modulation in fusiform cortex occurred in a similarly stimulus category-selective manner. This latter finding strongly constrains the claim that emotionally expressive movements modulate precisely those neuronal populations that code for the viewed stimulus category.

From agents to objects: sexist attitudes and neural responses to sexualized targets

Agency attribution is a hallmark of mind perception; thus, diminished attributions of agency may disrupt social-cognition processes typically elicited by human targets. The current studies examine the effect of perceivers' sexist attitudes on associations of agency with, and neural responses to, images of sexualized and clothed men and women. In Study 1, male (but not female) participants with higher hostile sexism scores more quickly associated sexualized women with first-person action verbs ("handle") and clothed women with third-person action verbs ("handles") than the inverse, as compared to their less sexist peers. In Study 2, hostile sexism correlated negatively with activation of regions associated with mental state attribution-medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, temporal poles-but only when viewing sexualized women. Heterosexual men best recognized images of sexualized female bodies (but not faces), as compared with other targets' bodies; however, neither face nor body recognition was related to hostile sexism, suggesting that the fMRI findings are not explained by more or less attention to sexualized female targets. Diminished mental state attribution is not unique to targets that people prefer to avoid, as in dehumanization of stigmatized people. The current studies demonstrate that appetitive social targets may elicit a similar response depending on perceivers' attitudes toward them.

Why do I like you when you behave like me? Neural mechanisms mediating positive consequences of observing someone being imitated

Social psychological and developmental research revealed that imitation serves a fundamental social function. It has been shown that human beings have the tendency to automatically mirror the behavior of others-the so-called chameleon effect. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that being imitated leads to positive feelings toward the imitator. But why do we feel more positive about someone who imitates us? In the current fMRI study we aimed at exploring the neural correlates of the positive consequences of being imitated by means of an observation paradigm. Our results indicate that being imitated compared to not being imitated activates brain areas that have been associated with emotion and reward processing, namely medial orbitofrontal cortex/ventromedial prefrontal cortex (mOFC/vmPFC, GLM whole-brain contrast). Moreover mOFC/vmPFC shows higher effective connectivity with striatum and mid-posterior insula during being imitated compared to not being imitated.

The neural origins of superficial and individuated judgments about ingroup and outgroup members

We often form impressions of others based on superficial information, such as a mere glimpse of their face. Given the opportunity to get to know someone, however, our judgments are allowed to become more individuated. The neural origins of these two types of social judgment remain unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to dissociate the neural mechanisms underlying superficial and individuated judgments. Given behavioral evidence demonstrating impairments in individuating others outside one's racial group, we additionally examined whether these neural mechanisms are race-selective. Superficial judgments recruited the amygdala. Individuated judgments engaged a cortical network implicated in mentalizing and theory of mind. One component of this mentalizing network showed selectivity to individuated judgments, but exclusively for targets of one's own race. The findings reveal the distinct-and race-selective-neural bases of our everyday superficial and individuated judgments of others.

Neuropsychological profile of autism and the broad autism phenotype

CONTEXT

Multiple articles describe a constellation of language, personality, and social-behavioral features present in relatives that mirror the symptom domains of autism, but are much milder in expression. Studies of this broad autism phenotype (BAP) may provide a potentially important complementary approach for detecting the genes causing autism and defining associated neural circuitry by identifying more refined phenotypes that can be measured quantitatively in both affected and unaffected individuals and that are tied to functioning in particular regions of the brain.

OBJECTIVE

To gain insight into neuropsychological features that index genetic liability to autism.

DESIGN

Case-control study.

SETTING

The general community.

PARTICIPANTS

Thirty-eight high-functioning individuals with autism and parents of autistic individuals, both with and without the BAP (n = 83), as well as control individuals.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

A comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tasks assessing social cognition, executive function, and global vs local processing strategies (central coherence).

RESULTS

Both individuals with autism and parents with the BAP differed from controls on measures of social cognition, with performance in the other 2 domains being more similar to controls.

CONCLUSIONS

Data suggest that the social cognitive domain may be an important target for linking phenotype to cognitive process to brain structure in autism and may ultimately provide insight into the genes involved in autism.

Social cognition and the brain: a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis explores the location and function of brain areas involved in social cognition, or the capacity to understand people's behavioral intentions, social beliefs, and personality traits. On the basis of over 200 fMRI studies, it tests alternative theoretical proposals that attempt to explain how several brain areas process information relevant for social cognition. The results suggest that inferring temporary states such as goals, intentions, and desires of other people-even when they are false and unjust from our own perspective--strongly engages the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Inferring more enduring dispositions of others and the self, or interpersonal norms and scripts, engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), although temporal states can also activate the mPFC. Other candidate tasks reflecting general-purpose brain processes that may potentially subserve social cognition are briefly reviewed, such as sequence learning, causality detection, emotion processing, and executive functioning (action monitoring, attention, dual task monitoring, episodic memory retrieval), but none of them overlaps uniquely with the regions activated during social cognition. Hence, it appears that social cognition particularly engages the TPJ and mPFC regions. The available evidence is consistent with the role of a TPJ-related mirror system for inferring temporary goals and intentions at a relatively perceptual level of representation, and the mPFC as a module that integrates social information across time and allows reflection and representation of traits and norms, and presumably also of intentionality, at a more abstract cognitive level.

Neuroscientific Evidence for Simulation and Shared Substrates in Emotion Recognition: Beyond Faces

According to simulation or shared-substrates models of emotion recognition, our ability to recognize the emotions expressed by other individuals relies, at least in part, on processes that internally simulate the same emotional state in ourselves. The term “emotional expressions” is nearly synonymous, in many people's minds, with facial expressions of emotion. However, vocal prosody and whole-body cues also convey emotional information. What is the relationship between these various channels of emotional communication? We first briefly review simulation models of emotion recognition, and then discuss neuroscientific evidence related to these models, including studies using facial expressions, whole-body cues, and vocal prosody. We conclude by discussing these data in the context of simulation and shared-substrates models of emotion recognition.