Mirror neurons and intentional attunement: commentary on Olds

Influence of interpersonal distance on collaborative performance in the joint Simon task-An fNIRS-based hyperscanning study

Collaboration is a critical skill in everyday life. It has been suggested that collaborative performance may be influenced by social factors such as interpersonal distance, which is defined as the perceived psychological distance between individuals. Previous literature has reported that close interpersonal distance may promote the level of self-other integration between interacting members, and in turn, enhance collaborative performance. These studies mainly focused on interdependent collaboration, which requires high levels of shared representations and self-other integration. However, little is known about the effect of interpersonal distance on independent collaboration (e.g., the joint Simon task), in which individuals perform the task independently while the final outcome is determined by the parties. To address this issue, we simultaneously measured the frontal activations of ninety-four pairs of participants using a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning technique while they performed a joint Simon task. Behavioral results showed that the Joint Simon Effect (JSE), defined as the RT difference between incongruent and congruent conditions indicating the level of self-other integration between collaborators, was larger in the friend group than in the stranger group. Consistently, the inter-brain neural synchronization (INS) across the dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex was also stronger in the friend group. In addition, INS in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex negatively predicted JSE only in the friend group. These results suggest that close interpersonal distance may enhance the shared mental representation among collaborators, which in turn influences their collaborative performance.

Aches, Pains, Rumbles, and Stumbles: Applying Somatic Countertransference and Body Reactivity in Clinical Work and Teaching

Recognizing somatic countertransference reactions is an essential tool for the psychodynamic clinician. Although the analyst's bodily reactivity has been written about throughout the history of our field, contemporary neuroscience, multiple code theory, and nonlinear system dynamics provide scientific buttressing to understand embodied phenomena. Patients often speak with and about their bodies, and the clinician who pays attention to these communications, as well as those emanating from his or her own body, has an additional resource to help the patient. Elvin Semrad's classic but largely unremembered "tour of the body" is one tool that can assist clinicians in how to receive and process body reactions that may be unconsciously split off, consciously withheld, or felt dangerous or beguiling. Three examples are used to illustrate embodiment and somatic countertransference as important clinical guides. An argument is made that these concepts should be taught and integrated into psychodynamic curricula.

The Effects of Empathy, Emotional Intelligence and Psychopathy on Interpersonal Interactions

The current study investigated the relationships between empathy (emotional and cognitive), emotional intelligence, psychopathy, emotional contagion, and non-conscious behavioural mimicry (smiles and hand scratches), using self-report scales and a script-based interview session exhibiting nine non-verbal gestures, on a student sample. Past findings suggest a deficit of emotional but not cognitive empathy in psychopaths. Empirical research on non-conscious behavioural mimicry in psychopathy with reference to emotional intelligence is somewhat scarce; however it was proposed that individuals high in psychopathic traits would show reduced emotional mimicry based on the relation of empathy to mimicry. The study was quasi-experimental, involving individual assessment of 51 participants. Results suggest decreased emotional empathy at high levels of psychopathy and show that emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between psychopathy and non-conscious mimicry (smiles per minute). Social competence might be more predictive of effects of psychopathy on non-conscious mimicry.

Psychopathology of the bodily self and the brain: the case of schizophrenia

In the present paper, we review the recent empirical evidence on the neurobiological basis of a minimal notion of the self, the bodily self. We show the relationship between the body, its motor potentialities and the notion of minimal self. We argue that this approach can shed new light onto self-disturbances and social deficits characterizing schizophrenia. We discuss our approach with other views on the neural correlates of self-disturbances in schizophrenia and propose that cognitive neuroscience can today address the classical topics of psychopathology by adding a new level of description, finally enabling the correlation between the first-person experiential aspects of psychiatric diseases and their neurobiological roots.

Attachment models affect brain responses in areas related to emotions and empathy in nulliparous women

BACKGROUND

The attachment model, as assessed by means of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), is crucial for understanding emotion regulation and feelings of security in human interactions as well as for the construction of the caregiving system. The caregiving system is a set of representations about affiliative behaviors, guided by sensitivity and empathy, and is fully mature in young-adulthood. Here, we examine how different attachment models influence brain responses in areas related to empathy and emotions in young-adult subjects with secure and dismissing attachment models.

METHODS

By means of AAI, we selected 11 nulliparous young-adult females with a secure model and 12 with a dismissing model. Subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance, whereas imitating or observing and empathizing with infant facial expressions. Subjects were tested for alexithymia and reflective functioning.

RESULTS

Dismissing subjects activated motor, mirror, and limbic brain areas to a significantly greater extent, but deactivated the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and the perigenual anterior cingulated cortex (pACC). During emotional faces, increased activity in dismissing women was seen in the right temporal pole. Furthermore, greater alexithymia was correlated with greater activity in the entorhinal cortex and greater deactivation in the pACC/mOFC.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide evidence of how the attachment model influences brain responses during a task eliciting attachment. In particular, hyperactivation of limbic and mirror areas may reflect emotional dysregulation of infantile experiences of rejection and lack of protection, whereas increased deactivation of fronto-medial areas may be the expression of the inhibition of attachment behaviors, which is a typical aspect of dismissing attachment.

Authenticity as an aim of psychoanalysis

This paper will present a series of predominantly clinical observations concerning the lengthy work a patient carries out, with the help of the analyst, in order to achieve greater personal authenticity. When this work is drawing to a close and the patient has gained a degree of authenticity, this authenticity remains within him, almost without his realizing it. The power of authenticity is instead revealed through the patient's most intimate and important relationships. In the long term, the patient's authenticity also alters his perception of himself and of his role in the world. He feels more alive and less overcome by a sense of futility, if earlier this had been the case.

Semiotic transformations in psychoanalysis with infants and adults

The author addresses issues that emerge when we compare psychoanalytic experiences with adults and with infants. Two analyses-one with a 35 year-old woman and one with a 2 week-old boy and his mother-illustrate that infant psychoanalytic experiences help us understand and handle adult transference. However, we cannot extrapolate infant experiences to adult work. Truly, witnessing the baby's communication widens our sensitivity to non-verbal layers of the adult's communication. Infant work also offers a direct encounter with the container and the contained personified by a mother with her baby. But we need to conceptualize carefully the links between clinical experiences with babies and adults. When we call an adult transference pattern 'infantile', we imply that primeval experience has been transformed into present behaviour. However, if we view the analytical situation as one in which infantile invariants have transformed into adult symptoms, we face the impossible task of indicating the roots of the present symptoms. The author rather suggests that what is transformed is not an invariant infantile essence but signs denoting the patient's inner reality. He proposes we define transformation as a semiotic process instead of building it on an essentialist grounding. If we view the analytic situation as a map of signs that we translate during our psychoanalytic work, we can proceed into defining containment as a semiotic process. This idea will be linked with a conceptualization of the mother-infant relation in semiotic terms.