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Gyimes IL, Valentini E. Reminders of Mortality: Investigating the Effects of Different Mortality Saliences on Somatosensory Neural Activity. Brain Sci 2023; 13:1077. [PMID: 37509009 PMCID: PMC10377243 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13071077] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2023] [Revised: 06/14/2023] [Accepted: 07/12/2023] [Indexed: 07/30/2023] Open
Abstract
The Terror Management Theory (TMT) offered a great deal of generative hypotheses that have been tested in a plethora of studies. However, there is a still substantive lack of clarity about the interpretation of TMT-driven effects and their underlying neurological mechanisms. Here, we aimed to expand upon previous research by introducing two novel methodological manipulations aimed to enhance the effects of mortality salience (MS). We presented participants with the idea of the participants' romantic partner's death as well as increased the perceived threat of somatosensory stimuli. Linear mixed modelling disclosed the greater effects of MS directed at one's romantic partner on pain perception (as opposed to the participant's own mortality). The theta event-related oscillatory activity measured at the vertex of the scalp was significantly lower compared to the control condition. We suggest that MS aimed at one's romantic partner can result in increased effects on perceptual experience; however, the underlying neural activities are not reflected by a classical measure of cortical arousal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Istvan Laszlo Gyimes
- Centre for Brain Science, Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
| | - Elia Valentini
- Centre for Brain Science, Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
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2
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Gao T, Han S. Distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underlying learning and representations of symbols of life and death. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:1328-1346. [PMID: 35368080 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac139] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/06/2022] [Revised: 03/14/2022] [Accepted: 03/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Life and death are 2 fundamental concepts regarding existence of organisms. People often signify these concepts using symbols to facilitate communications, but how the brain learns and represents these symbols remains unclear. In the present study, we quantified behavioral and brain responses during learning associations between words ("life" or "death") with shapes as concrete referents. Behavioral responses to word-shape pairs showed an affirmative response bias to life-shape pairs but a denial response bias to death-shape pairs. Multimodal brain imaging results revealed that the right frontal and dorsal cingulate cortices monitored these response biases, respectively. Moreover, relative to unlearned shapes, life-related shapes induced increased alpha (9-14 Hz) oscillations in the right parietal cortex and precuneus, whereas death-related shapes enhanced beta (15-30 Hz) oscillations in the left parietal cortex, superior temporal sulcus, and precuneus. Our findings unraveled distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underlying learning and representations of concrete referents of life and death concepts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tianyu Gao
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, 52 Haidian Road, Beijing 100080, China
| | - Shihui Han
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, 52 Haidian Road, Beijing 100080, China
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3
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Xu Z, Zhu R, Zhang S, Zhang S, Liang Z, Mai X, Liu C. Mortality salience enhances neural activities related to guilt and shame when recalling the past. Cereb Cortex 2022; 32:5145-5162. [PMID: 35102376 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2021] [Revised: 12/31/2021] [Accepted: 01/01/2022] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Mortality salience (MS) influences cognition and behavior. However, its effect on emotion (especially moral emotions) and the underlying neural correlates are unclear. We investigated how MS priming modulated guilt and shame in a later recall task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The behavioral results indicated that MS increased self-reported guilt but not shame. The neural results showed that MS strengthened neural activities related to the psychological processes of guilt and shame. Specifically, for both guilt and shame, MS increased activation in a region associated with self-referential processing (ventral medial prefrontal cortex). For guilt but not shame, MS increased the activation of regions associated with cognitive control (orbitofrontal cortex) and emotion processing (amygdala). For shame but not guilt, MS decreased brain functional connectivity related to self-referential processing. A direct comparison showed that MS more strongly decreased a functional connectivity related to self-referential processing in the shame than in the guilt condition. Additionally, the activation of insula during MS priming was partly predictive of neural activities related to guilt and shame in the subsequent recall task. Our study sheds light on the psychological and neural mechanisms of MS effects on moral emotions and provides theoretical insights for enriching terror management theory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhenhua Xu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
| | - Ruida Zhu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Business School, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
| | - Shen Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
| | - Sihui Zhang
- Department of General Adult Psychiatry, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg 69115, Germany
| | - Zilu Liang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
| | - Xiaoqin Mai
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
| | - Chao Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.,Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
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4
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Fan X, Gao T, Luo S, Gelfand MJ, Han S. Religious Afterlife Beliefs Decrease Behavioral Avoidance of Symbols of Mortality. PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN 2022:1461672221096281. [PMID: 35611400 DOI: 10.1177/01461672221096281] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
An astonishing cultural phenomenon is where, far away from or close to a city center, people in different societies localize cemeteries that function as both sites of memory of lost ones and symbols of mortality. Yet a psychological account of such differences in behavioral responses to symbols of mortality is lacking. Across five studies (N = 1,590), we tested a psychological model that religious afterlife beliefs decrease behavioral avoidance of symbols of mortality (BASM) by developing and validating a word-position task for quantifying BASM. We showed evidence that religious believers, including Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, exhibited decreased BASM relative to nonbelievers. We also provide evidence for a causal relationship between religious afterlife beliefs and reduced BASM. Our findings provide new insight into the functional role of religious afterlife beliefs in modulating human avoidance behavior in response to symbols of mortality.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaoyue Fan
- Peking University, Beijing, China.,Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China
| | | | - Siyang Luo
- Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China
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5
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Kuylen M, Han S, Harris L, Huys Q, Monsó S, Pitman A, Fleming SM, David AS. Mortality Awareness: New Directions. OMEGA-JOURNAL OF DEATH AND DYING 2022:302228221100640. [PMID: 35531947 DOI: 10.1177/00302228221100640] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Thinking about our own death and its salience in relation to decision making has become a fruitful area of multidisciplinary research across the breadth of psychological science. By bringing together experts from philosophy, cognitive and affective neuroscience, clinical and computational psychiatry we have attempted to set out the current state of the art and point to areas of further enquiry. One stimulus for doing this is the need to engage with policy makers who are now having to consider guidelines on suicide and assisted suicide so that they may be aware of their own as well as the wider populations' cognitive processes when confronted with the ultimate truth of mortality.
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Affiliation(s)
- Margot Kuylen
- Mental Health, Ethics and Law Research Group, Department of Psychological Medicine, 4616King's College London, London, UK
| | - Shihui Han
- Culture and Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, 12465Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Lasana Harris
- Department of Experimental Psychology, 4919University College London, London, UK
| | - Quentin Huys
- Division of Psychiatry and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, 4919University College London, London, UK
| | - Susana Monsó
- Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science, 16757Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain
| | | | - Stephen M Fleming
- Department of Experimental Psychology, 4919University College London, London, UK
| | - Anthony S David
- UCL Institute of Mental Health, 4919University College London, London, UK
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6
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Tan H, Duan Q, Liu Y, Qiao X, Luo S. Does losing money truly hurt? The shared neural bases of monetary loss and pain. Hum Brain Mapp 2022; 43:3153-3163. [PMID: 35315958 PMCID: PMC9189080 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25840] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2021] [Revised: 02/15/2022] [Accepted: 03/06/2022] [Indexed: 01/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Both monetary loss and pain have been studied for decades, but evidence supporting the relationship between them is still lacking. We conducted a meta‐analysis to explore the overlapping brain regions between monetary loss and pain, including physical pain and social pain. Regardless of the type of pain experienced, activation of the anterior insula was a shared neural representation of monetary loss and pain. The network representation pattern of monetary loss was more similar to that of social pain than that of physical pain. In conclusion, our research provided evidence of the common neural correlates of monetary loss and pain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huixin Tan
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.,State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Qin Duan
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Yihan Liu
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Xinyu Qiao
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Siyang Luo
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
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7
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Zhou X, Pan Y, Zhang R, Bei L, Li X. Mortality threat mitigates interpersonal competition: an EEG-based hyperscanning study. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2021; 16:621-631. [PMID: 33755182 PMCID: PMC8138089 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsab033] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2020] [Revised: 02/21/2021] [Accepted: 03/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Awareness of death has been shown to influence human cognition and behavior. Yet, how mortality threat (MT) impacts our daily social behavior remains elusive. To address this issue, we developed a dyadic experimental model and recruited 86 adults (43 dyads) to complete two computer-based tasks (i.e. competitive and cooperative button-pressing). We manipulated dyads’ awareness of death [MT vs neutral control (NC)] and simultaneously measured their neurophysiological activity using electroencephalography during the task. Several fundamental observations were made. First, the MT group showed significantly attenuated competition and slightly promoted cooperation. Second, compared to NC, MT significantly decreased gamma-band inter-brain synchronization (IBS) in the competitive context, which was associated with increased subjective fear of death within dyads. Notably, those effects were context-specific: we did not observe comparable results in the cooperative context. Finally, a machine-learning approach was successfully used to discriminate between the MT and NC groups based on accumulated IBS. Together, these findings indicate that MT to some extent mitigates interpersonal competition, and such mitigation might be associated with changes in gamma-band IBS.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaoyu Zhou
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
| | - Yafeng Pan
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm 17165, Sweden
| | - Ruqian Zhang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
| | - Litian Bei
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
| | - Xianchun Li
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Affiliated Mental Health Center (ECNU), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
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Yanagisawa K, Kashima ES, Shigemune Y, Nakai R, Abe N. Neural Representations of Death in the Cortical Midline Structures Promote Temporal Discounting. Cereb Cortex Commun 2021; 2:tgab013. [PMID: 34296159 PMCID: PMC8152905 DOI: 10.1093/texcom/tgab013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2020] [Revised: 02/08/2021] [Accepted: 02/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Death is an important reminder that our lives are finite. Although some studies have shown that thinking about one’s own death increases temporal discounting (i.e., the devaluing of future rewards), the underlying neural mechanisms are still unknown. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, we compared the neural and behavioral processes of temporal discounting across four conditions involving distinct types of future thinking (death related, negative, neutral, and positive). Replicating prior research, the behavioral evidence showed that temporal discounting increased when thinking about one’s own future death. Multivoxel pattern analysis showed that death-related future thinking was decoded in default mode regions, including the inferior parietal lobule, precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). When future thinking was death related (vs. negative), increased temporal discounting was associated with a higher decoding accuracy in the precuneus and MPFC. The present findings suggest that death-related neural representations are distributed across default mode regions, and neural populations in the cortical midline structures play a crucial role in the integration of one's own death into economic decision-making.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kuniaki Yanagisawa
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University, Kobe 657-8501 Japan
| | - Emiko S Kashima
- School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Vic 3086, Australia
| | - Yayoi Shigemune
- Research and Development Initiative, Chuo University, Tokyo 192-0393, Japan
| | - Ryusuke Nakai
- Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
| | - Nobuhito Abe
- Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
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