Brain mapping of psychological processes with psychometric scales: An fMRI method for social neuroscience

How do risks and benefits affect user' privacy decisions? An event-related potential study on privacy calculus process

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine how risks and benefits affect users' privacy-related decision-making processes.

Design/methods/approach

This study collected and analyzed the neural activity processes of users' privacy-related decisions when faced with personalized services with different risks and benefits through an ERP experiment that included 40 participants.

Findings/results

The findings show that users subconsciously categorize personalized services based on benefit; Privacy calculus affects privacy decision by influencing the allocation of cognitive resources for personalized service, and the scarcity of cognitive resources increases the degree of privacy disclosure; Emotional change in privacy decision is the result of many factors, not the result of privacy risk alone.

Originality/Discussion

This study provides a new perspective to explain the process of privacy decision-making, and a new approach to investigate the privacy paradox.

Relationship between trust in neighbors and regional brain volumes in a population-based study

Trust is a fundamental part of human interpersonal relationships, and among other complex factors it is shown to be linked with demographic characteristics and specific regions of the brain. The authors utilized a large, community-based database gathered from the Dallas Heart Study to determine specific brain regions associated with an individual's trust in neighbors. A trust questionnaire was taken and regional brain volumes were determined from structural magnetic resonance imaging. Two analyses using logistic regressions in a training set and validation set were performed to investigate the association between measures of trust and bilateral brain region volumes and thickness. A total of 1527 participants were included in the final analysis. Right caudal anterior cingulate cortex thickness and left caudate volume were inversely correlated with neighbor trust, while left amygdala volume was positively correlated with neighbor trust. Greater age and higher level of education were positively correlated with neighbor trust. African Americans showed less neighbor trust than Caucasians and Hispanics. Anterior cingulate cortex, caudate, and amygdala are all integral parts of the salience network; thus, results of this study suggest that the salience network, the brain network responsible for functions such as communication and social behavior, may play a role in the formation of interpersonal trust.

The tendency to trust is reflected in human brain structure

Trust is an important component of human social life. Within the brain, the function within a neural network implicated in interpersonal and social-cognitive processing is associated with the way trust-based decisions are made. However, it is currently unknown how localized structure within the healthy human brain is associated with the tendency to trust other people. This study was designed to test the prediction that individual differences in the tendency to trust are associated with regional gray matter volume within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), amygdala and anterior insula. Behavioral and neuroimaging data were collected from a sample of 82 healthy participants. Individual differences in the tendency to trust were measured in two ways (self-report and behaviorally: trustworthiness evaluation of faces task). Voxel based morphometry analyses of high-resolution structural images (VBM8-DARTEL) were conducted to test for the association between the tendency to trust and regional gray matter volume. The results provide converging evidence that individuals characterized as trusting others more exhibit increased gray matter volume within the bilateral vmPFC and bilateral anterior insula. Greater right amygdala volume is associated with the tendency to rate faces as more trustworthy and distrustworthy (U-shaped function). A whole brain analysis also shows that the tendency to trust is reflected in the structure of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These findings advance neural models that associate the structure and function of the human brain with social decision-making and the tendency trust other people.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as a new tool for neuroeconomic research

Over the last decade, the application of neuroscience to economic research has gained in importance and the number of neuroeconomic studies has grown extensively. The most common method for these investigations is fMRI. However, fMRI has limitations (particularly concerning situational factors) that should be countered with other methods. This review elaborates on the use of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a new and promising tool for investigating economic decision making both in field experiments and outside the laboratory. We describe results of studies investigating the reliability of prototype NIRS studies, as well as detailing experiments using conventional and stationary fNIRS devices to analyze this potential. This review article shows that further research using mobile fNIRS for studies on economic decision making outside the laboratory could be a fruitful avenue helping to develop the potential of a new method for field experiments outside the laboratory.

Does human body odor represent a significant and rewarding social signal to individuals high in social openness?

Across a wide variety of domains, experts differ from novices in their response to stimuli linked to their respective field of expertise. It is currently unknown whether similar patterns can be observed with regard to social expertise. The current study therefore focuses on social openness, a central social skill necessary to initiate social contact. Human body odors were used as social cues, as they inherently signal the presence of another human being. Using functional MRI, hemodynamic brain responses to body odors of women reporting a high (n = 14) or a low (n = 12) level of social openness were compared. Greater activation within the inferior frontal gyrus and the caudate nucleus was observed in high socially open individuals compared to individuals low in social openness. With the inferior frontal gyrus being a crucial part of the human mirror neuron system, and the caudate nucleus being implicated in social reward, it is discussed whether human body odor might constitute more of a significant and rewarding social signal to individuals high in social openness compared to individuals low in social openness process.

The negative attribution processes of mothers of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The objective of this study was to investigate the attribution processes of mothers regarding children's prosocial behaviors, inattention, and hyperactivity/impulsivity (symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD) using two paradigms. The first paradigm involved multidimensional attributions. The second paradigm concerned making attributions of children's identical behaviors based on information such as consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. The participants were 64 mothers of children with ADHD (7-13 years old) and 64 mothers with typical/normal children (7-12 years old). The results showed that mothers of typical children exhibited positive attribution styles or person attributions whereas mothers of children with ADHD exhibited negative attribution styles. Mothers of children with ADHD tended to make personal attributions of children's negative behaviors (e.g., inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity; HI) but made situational attributions of prosocial behaviors. The results of this study can be used in future studies of the effects of intervention on children with ADHD or in studies related to neurophysiology.