The Embodiment of an Older Avatar in a Virtual Reality Setting Impacts the Social Motivation of Young Adults

OBJECTIVES

Socio-emotional selectivity theory implies that an individual's motives change over their lifespan, starting with a focus on information seeking and shifting toward the motivation of maintaining emotionally meaningful social relationships in old age. The concept of future time perspective serves as an underlying mechanism for this phenomenon.

METHODS

This study aimed to capture how social motivation changes as a result of the manipulation of one's own visual appearance. Thus, the explicit age stereotypes of N = 74 participants were assessed, among other covariates. The following intervention consisted of a virtual reality (VR) scenario in which the experimental group embodied an old age avatar and the control group a young age avatar.

RESULTS

Changes in social motivation were assessed using the concept of socio-emotional selectivity based on imagined situational preferences. Results with strong effect sizes indicate that changes in social motivation commonly connected with old age might be caused by visual cues when actively embodying a virtual avatar.

Reduced gray matter volume in the left prefrontal, occipital, and temporal regions as predictors for posttraumatic stress disorder: a voxel-based morphometric study

The concept of acute stress disorder (ASD) was introduced as a diagnostic entity to improve the identification of traumatized people who are likely to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Neuroanatomical models suggest that changes in the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus play a role in the development of PTSD. Using voxel-based morphometry, this study aimed to investigate the predictive power of gray matter volume (GMV) alterations for developing PTSD. The GMVs of ASD patients (n = 21) were compared to those of PTSD patients (n = 17) and healthy controls (n = 18) in whole-brain and region-of-interest analyses. The GMV alterations seen in ASD patients shortly after the traumatic event (T1) were also correlated with PTSD symptom severity and symptom clusters 4 weeks later (T2). Compared with healthy controls, the ASD patients had significantly reduced GMV in the left visual cortex shortly after the traumatic event (T1) and in the left occipital and prefrontal regions 4 weeks later (T2); no significant differences in GMV were seen between the ASD and PTSD patients. Furthermore, a significant negative association was found between the GMV reduction in the left lateral temporal regions seen after the traumatic event (T1) and PTSD hyperarousal symptoms 4 weeks later (T2). Neither amygdala nor hippocampus alterations were predictive for the development of PTSD. These data suggest that gray matter deficiencies in the left hemispheric occipital and temporal regions in ASD patients may predict a liability for developing PTSD.