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While we instantaneously recognize a face as attractive, it is much harder to explain what exactly defines personal attraction. This suggests that attraction depends on implicit processing of complex, culturally and individually defined features. Generative adversarial neural networks (GANs), which learn to mimic complex data distributions, can potentially model subjective preferences unconstrained by pre-defined model parameterization. Here, we present generative brain-computer interfaces (GBCI), coupling GANs with brain-computer interfaces. GBCI first presents a selection of images and captures personalized attractiveness reactions toward the images via electroencephalography. These reactions are then used to control a GAN model, finding a representation that matches the features constituting an attractive image for an individual. We conducted an experiment (N=30) to validate GBCI using a face-generating GAN and producing images that are hypothesized to be individually attractive. In double-blind evaluation of the GBCI-produced images against matched controls, we found GBCI yielded highly accurate results. Thus, the use of EEG responses to control a GAN presents a valid tool for interactive information-generation. Furthermore, the GBCI-derived images visually replicated known effects from social neuroscience, suggesting that the individually responsive, generative nature of GBCI provides a powerful, new tool in mapping individual differences and visualizing cognitive-affective processing.

Over the last three decades, social neuroscience, which had emerged as a subdiscipline of cognitive neuroscience at the beginning of 1990s, has been rapidly developing its specific methodology and extending its research scope. By combining knowledge and methodology from social, psychological and biological sciences it is uniquely suited to study human functioning on multiple levels and elucidate the trajectories underlying human social behavior. The current article aims to briefly cover the history of social neuroscience by discussing development of both research and academic structures related to it. Moreover, the research on the association between social isolation and subjective social status, and health is presented as an example of practical application of the interdisciplinary approach adopted by social neuroscience. Neuronauka społeczna, która narodziła się jako subdyscyplina neuronauki poznawczej na początku lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX w., na przestrzeni ostatnich dekad ulegała dynamicznym przemianom. Unikalne połączenie perspektywy nauk społecznych, psychologicznych i biologicznych, jakie oferuje ta dziedzina, umożliwia badanie funkcjonowania człowieka na wielu płaszczyznach, co może prowadzić do głębszego zrozumienia mechanizmów je kształtujących. Niniejsza publikacja ma na celu przybliżenie procesu kształtowania się neuronauki społecznej, zarówno pod kątem rozwoju badań, jak i struktur akademickich z nią związanych. Ponadto zostały przedstawione wyniki dotychczasowych badań z zakresu izolacji społecznej i subiektywnego statusu społecznego oraz wpływ tych czynników na zdrowie publiczne, co stanowi przykład zastosowania interdyscyplinarnego podejścia neuronauki społecznej w praktyce.

The ability to synchronise with other people is a core socio-motor competence acquired during human development. In this study we aimed to understand the impact of individual emotional arousal on joint action performance. We asked 15 mixed-gender groups (of 4 individuals each) to participate in a digital, four-way movement synchronisation task. Participants shared the same physical space, but could not see each other during the task. In each trial run, every participant was induced with an emotion-laden acoustic stimulus (pre-selected from the second version of International Affective Digitized Sounds). Our data demonstrated that the human ability to synchronise is overall robust to fluctuations in individual emotional arousal, but performance varies in quality and movement speed as a result of valence of emotional induction (both on the individual and group level). We found that three negative inductions per group per trial led to a drop in overall group synchronisation performance (measured as the median and standard deviation of Kuramoto’s order parameter—an index measuring the strength of synchrony between oscillators, in this study, players) in the 15 sec post-induction. We report that negatively-valenced inductions led to slower oscillations, whilst positive induction afforded faster oscillations. On the individual level of synchronisation performance we found an effect of empathetic disposition (higher competence linked to better performance during the negative induction condition) and of participant’s sex (males displayed better synchronisation performance with others). We believe this work is a blueprint for exploring the frontiers of inextricably bound worlds of emotion and joint action, be it physical or digital.

Replication of published results is crucial for ensuring the robustness and self-correction of research, yet replications are scarce in many fields. Replicating researchers will therefore often have to decide which of several relevant candidates to target for replication. Formal strategies for efficient study selection have been proposed, but none have been explored for practical feasibility–a prerequisite for validation. Here we move one step closer to efficient replication study selection by exploring the feasibility of a particular selection strategy that estimates replication value as a function of citation impact and sample size (Isager, van ’t Veer, & Lakens, 2021) in the field of social neuroscience, where replication seems especially important. We first report our efforts to generate a representative candidate set of replication targets in social fMRI research. We then explore the feasibility and reliability of estimating replication value for the targets in our set, resulting in a dataset of 1358 studies ranked on their value of prioritising them for replication. In addition, we carefully examine possible measures, test auxiliary assumptions, and identify boundary conditions of measuring value and uncertainty. Our exploratory report demonstrates the importance of how to implement study selection strategies in practice, and provides a general framework for exploring the feasibility of formal study selection strategies. We end our report by discussing how future validation studies might be designed.

Funding Information: JL was funded by the Academy of Finland (grant no. 328674). Non

In this project, we will evaluate a newly developed fMRI movie watching task and investigate neurophysiological similarities through different levels of investigation between participants. First, neural and physiological correlates in children and adults will be investigated to inform about developmental patterns, affective processing and dynamics of these interacting systems while watching the fMRI movie task. In addition, behavioral ratings of the affective content of the task will be collected from children and adults to ensure the feasibility and validity of the task in eliciting the expected neural responses associated with emotion process, regulation or mentalizing. Second, we will examine neural and physiological similarities in adult participants who are friends compared to randomly assigned dyads of the similar age and same sex, while considering the impact of the duration and quality of their relationship. Such investigations will inform about the interplay of different neurophysiological within person dynamics and the influence of social variables and the interaction of these systems in meaningful social dyads (i.e., friendship). Overall, these investigations will build the foundation for an in depth understanding of the social and neurophysiological properties associated with a novel fMRI movie watching task for use in different age groups, including children and adults.

For the current exploratory study, it is proposed to investigate the difference in theory-of-mind (TOM) engagement during human-human (HHI) and human-robot interaction (HRI) in a natural setting. In the existing database from Laura Jastrzab, participants played a rock-paper-scissors (RPS) task against either a person, computer, mechanic or humanoid robot during four functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) runs. Higher-level reasoning skills have been associated with the RPS task to predict the opponent’s behavior, indicating the involvement of cognitive theory-of-mind processes. In the current analysis it will be examined whether the beliefs about the opponent’s behavior is dependent on it being either a robot or a person, therefore inducing a distinct theory-of-mind involvement during the RPS game. To investigate the involvement of the theory-of-mind, the associated neural network in the brain will be analyzed in terms of functional connectivity. That is, a psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis will be conducted to examine the influence of the interaction partner on the strength of the theory-of-mind connections during the game. The aim of a PPI analysis is to determine whether the information flow between regions is regulated by the interaction between the physiological effect of pre-determined brain regions and the psychological influence of the task. In this case, the PPI analysis will therefore be used to determine whether the connections within the theory-of-mind network are influenced by the type of interaction partner in the RPS task.

Mother-child brain-to-brain synchrony captures the temporal similarities in brain signals between dyadic partners, and has been shown to emerge during the display of joint behaviours. Despite the rise in the number of studies that investigate synchrony in naturalistic contexts, the use of varying methodological approaches to compute synchrony remains a central problem. When dyads engage in unstructured social interactions, the wide range of behavioural cues they display contribute to the use of varying lengths of signals to compute synchrony. The present functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) study investigates how different methods to quantify brain signals during joint and non-joint portions of dyadic play affect the outcome of brain-to-brain synchrony. Three strategies to cope with unstructured data are tested and different signal lengths of 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45s were used to determine the optimal method to sensitively capture synchrony. Results showed that using all available portions of the signals generated a greater number of less conservative results compared to the other two strategies, which were to compute the average synchrony for the joint and non-joint signals portions and to compute the difference between the average synchrony of joint and non-joint portions. From the different signal durations, only length portions of 25s to 35s generated significant results. These findings demonstrate that differences in computational approaches and signal lengths affect synchrony measurements and should be considered in naturalistic synchrony studies.

Psychological views on political orientation generally agree that conservatism is associated with negativity bias but disagree on the form of that association. Some view conservatism as a psychological defense that insulates from negative stimuli and events. Others view conservatism as a consequence of increased dispositional sensitivity to negative stimuli and events. Further complicating matters, research shows that conservatives are sometimes more and sometimes less sensitive to negative stimuli and events. The current research integrates these opposing views and results. We reasoned that conservatives should typically be less sensitive to negative stimuli if conservative beliefs act as a psychological defense. However, when core components of conservative beliefs are threatened, the psychological defense may fall, and conservatives may show heightened sensitivity to negative stimuli. In two ERP studies, participants were randomly assigned to either an ostensibly real economic threat or a nonthreatening control condition. To measure reactivity to negative stimuli, we indexed the P3 component to aversive white noise bursts in an auditory oddball paradigm. In both studies, the relationship between increased conservatism and P3 mean amplitude was negative in the control condition but positive in threat condition (this relationship was stronger in Study 2). In Study 2, source localization of the P3 component revealed that, after threat, conservatism was associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, regions associated with conflict-related processes. These results demonstrate that the link between conservatism and negativity bias is context-dependent, i.e., dependent on threat experiences.

Advances in the understanding of developmental brain disorders such as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are being achieved through human neurogenetics such as, for example, identifying de novo mutations in SYNGAP1 as one relatively common cause of ASD. A recently developed rat line lacking the calcium/lipid binding (C2) and GTPase activation protein (GAP) domain may further help uncover the neurobiological basis of deficits in children with ASD. This study focused on social dominance in the tube test using Syngap+/Δ-GAP (rats heterozygous for the C2/GAP domain deletion) as alterations in social behaviour are a key facet of the human phenotype. Male animals of this line living together formed a stable intra-cage hierarchy, but they were submissive when living with wild-type (WT) cage-mates, thereby modelling the social withdrawal seen in ASD. The study includes a detailed analysis of specific behaviours expressed in social interactions by WT and mutant animals, including the observation that when the Syngap+/Δ-GAP mutants that had been living together had separate dominance encounters with WT animals from other cages, the two higher ranking Syngap+/Δ-GAP rats remained dominant whereas the two lower ranking mutants were still submissive. Although only observed in a small subset of animals, these findings support earlier observations with a rat model of Fragile X, indicating that their experience of winning or losing dominance encounters has a lasting influence on subsequent encounters with others. Our results highlight and model that even with single-gene mutations, dominance phenotypes reflect an interaction between genotypic and environmental factors.

Recent advances in social neuroscience have highlighted the critical role of the cerebellum and especially the posterior cerebellar Crus in social mentalizing (i.e., theory of mind). Research in the past 5 years has provided growing evidence supporting the view that the posterior cerebellum builds internal action models of our social interactions to predict how other people's actions will be executed, and what our most likely responses to these actions will be. This paper presents an overview of a series of fMRI experiments on novel tasks involving a combination of (a) the learning or generation of chronological sequences of social actions either in an explicit or implicit manner, which (b) require social mentalizing on another person's mental state such as goals, beliefs, and implied traits. Together, the results strongly confirm the central role of the posterior cerebellar Crus in identifying and automatizing action sequencing during social mentalizing, and in predicting future action sequences based on social mentalizing inferences about others. This research program has important implications: It provides for the first time (a) fruitful starting points for diagnosing and investigating social sequencing dysfunctions in a variety of mental disorders which have also been related to cerebellar dysfunctions, (b) provides the necessary tools for testing whether non-invasive neurostimulation targeting the posterior cerebellum has a causal effect on social functioning, and (c) whether these stimulation techniques and training programs guided by novel cerebellar social sequencing insights, can be exploited to increase posterior cerebellar plasticity in order to alleviate social impairments in mental disorders.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen that people can adapt quickly to ensure that their social needs are met after being forced to isolate and socially distance. Many individuals turned immediately to music, as evidenced by people singing from balconies, watching live concerts on social media, and group singing online. In this article, we show how these musical adaptations can be understood through the latest advances in the social neuroscience of music-an area that, to date, has been largely overlooked. By streamlining and synthesizing prior theory and research, we introduce a model of the brain that sheds light on the social functions and brain mechanisms that underlie the musical adaptations used for human connection. We highlight the role of oxytocin and the neurocircuitry associated with reward, stress, and the immune system. We show that the social brain networks implicated in music production (in contrast to music listening) overlap with the networks in the brain implicated in the social processes of human cognition-mentalization, empathy, and synchrony-all of which are components of herding; moreover, these components have evolved for social affiliation and connectedness. We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic could be a starting point for an improved understanding of the relationship between music and the social brain, and we outline goals for future research in the social neuroscience of music. In a time when people across the globe have been unable to meet in person, they have found a way to meet in the music. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

In this paper, joint decision making processes are studied and the role of cognitive metaphors as mental models in them. A second-order self-modeling network model is introduced based on mechanisms known from cognitive and social neuroscience and cognitive metaphor and mental model literature. The cognitive metaphors were modeled as specific forms of mental models providing a form of modulation within the joint decision making process. The model addresses not only the use of these mental models in the decision making, but also their hebbian learning and the control over the learning. The obtained self-modeling network model was applied to two types of metaphors that affect joint decision making in different manners: a cooperative metaphor and a competitive metaphor. By a number of scenarios it was shown how the obtained self-modeling network model can be used to simulate and analyze joint decision processes and how they are influenced by such cognitive metaphors.

Bien que la sociologie ait pour objet l'analyse du comportement humain, elle a toujours eu une attitude ambivalente avec certains concepts cles pour ce genre d'analyse. L'un des exemples les plus significatifs est celui de la conscience. D'une part, la centralite de ce concept pour l'analyse sociologique est demontree par la diffusion de son utilisation, tant chez les auteurs classiques que chez les auteurs contemporains ; d'autre part, une definition claire et partagee de celui-ci est consideree comme hors de question, car il ne peut etre reduit aux methodes empiriques de scientificite qui prevalent encore dans la sociologie contemporaine. L'essai propose une approche alternative possible qui, stimulee par l'influence des neurosciences et des sciences cognitives, peut conduire a une nouvelle approche de l'etude sociologique de la conscience

There is emergent literature that converges from neuroscience and entrepreneurship research, but the definitions and interlinkages are still inconsistent. We conduct a systematic literature review of 167 papers on the interface between neuroscience and entrepreneurship to address this. We observe the literature trends examining the interlinkages between neuroscience and entrepreneurial intention through six antecedents, namely - molecular neuroscience, systems neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, and computational neuroscience. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial intention impacts entrepreneurial activity through five factors, including (1) opportunity recognition, (2) evaluation and risk-taking, (3) entrepreneurial cognition, (4) entrepreneurial behavior, and (5) entrepreneurial decision-making. From our discussions, the links among the neural factors affecting entrepreneurship are identified, and a research agenda highlighting a pathway for future studies is proposed.

Although empathy drives prosocial behaviors, it is not always a reliable source of information in moral decision making. In this essay, I integrate evolutionary theory, behavioral economics, psychology, and social neuroscience to demonstrate why and how empathy is unconsciously and rapidly modulated by various social signals and situational factors. This theoretical framework explains why decision making that relies solely on empathy is not ideal and can, at times, erode ethical values. This perspective has social and societal implications and can be used to reduce cognitive biases and guide moral decisions.

In recent years, the possible benefits of mindfulness meditation have sparked much public and academic interest. Mindfulness emphasizes cultivating awareness of our immediate experience and has been associated with compassion, empathy, and various other prosocial traits. However, neurobiological evidence pertaining to the prosocial benefits of mindfulness in social settings is sparse. In this study, we investigate neural correlates of trait mindful awareness during naturalistic dyadic interactions, using both intra-brain and inter-brain measures. We used the Muse headset, a portable electroencephalogram (EEG) device often used to support mindfulness meditation, to record brain activity from dyads as they engaged in naturalistic face-to-face interactions in a museum setting. While we did not replicate prior laboratory-based findings linking trait mindfulness to individual brain responses (N = 379 individuals), self-reported mindful awareness did predict dyadic inter-brain synchrony, in theta (~5–8 Hz) and beta frequencies (~26-27 Hz; N = 62 dyads). These findings underscore the importance of conducting social neuroscience research in ecological settings to enrich our understanding of how (multi-brain) neural correlates of social traits such as mindful awareness manifest during social interaction, while raising critical practical considerations regarding the viability of commercially available EEG systems.

La emergencia epidemiológica por COVID-19, es una pandemia que se afrontó en todo el mundo, afectando directa o indirectamente a muchos países, por lo que es importante analizar las consecuencias neurocognitivas desde una perspectiva de la neurociencia social. Partimos que, el área neurocognitiva de la persona se refleja en los procesos de la memoria, atención, razonamiento, lenguaje, conciencia, funciones ejecutivas, otros, pudiendo ser modificados por los estímulos externos, en este caso, la crisis que generó la enfermedad como tal, pero también los estresores siempre relacionados a la pandemia; los impactos en la economía, el cambio en la escuela o trabajo, el encierro, el distanciamiento social, la corrupción, entre otros. Con un enfoque cualitativo, utilizando como herramienta la compilación de estudios previos sobre el tema, se visualiza desde un enfoque epistemológico, resaltando el impacto del estrés en cambios como la percepción social, las neuronas espejo, la teoría de la mente, la autoconciencia, autorreflexión, el autoconcepto, memoria, la autorregulación emocional, prejuicios, relaciones sociales, rechazo social, resiliencia. Por lo anterior expuesto, las consecuencias neurocognitivas de la COVID-19, requieren de una mirada multidisciplinaria, para poder contribuir de forma integral en el abordaje desde todos los ámbitos de salud.

Integration of social cues to initiate adaptive emotional and behavioral responses is a fundamental aspect of animal and human behavior. In humans, social communication includes prominent nonverbal components, such as social touch, gestures and facial expressions. Comparative studies investigating the neural basis of social communication in rodents has historically been centered on olfactory signals and vocalizations, with relatively less focus on non-verbal social cues. Here, we outline two exciting research directions: First, we will review recent observations pointing to a role of social facial expressions in rodents. Second, we will review observations that point to a role of 'non-canonical' rodent body language: body posture signals beyond stereotyped displays in aggressive and sexual behavior. In both sections, we will outline how social neuroscience can build on recent advances in machine learning, robotics and micro-engineering to push these research directions forward towards a holistic systems neurobiology of rodent body language.

With the growing population of older adults, we are facing unprecedented levels of age-related health problems, including Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias. In addition, older adults—and especially those suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease—are frequently the targets of financial exploitation (Lichtenberg, 2016). Fraud and financial abuse yield annual losses of nearly $3 billion with the vast majority of cases being perpetrated by strangers (51%) or friends and family (34%) (Roberto & Teaster, 2011). Yet, very little is known about how older adults integrate information from the social domain to inform economic decision making. To address this gap, we will assess social decision-making skills with two games from the behavioral economics literature that probe trust and fairness. We will also build off prior work that has suggested that victims of financial exploitation are often from low socioeconomic status groups (Choi & Mayer, 2000), have poorer cognitive functioning (James, Boyle, & Bennett, 2014), have more severe depression (Butters et al., 2008; Dotson, Beydoun, & Zonderman, 2010), and are more socially withdrawn (Choi & Mayer, 2000; Kuiper et al., 2015) by collecting information on these variables as well. In our prior work, we assessed the correlates of financial susceptibility in older adults around the Philadelphia, PA metropolitan area (10.17605/OSF.IO/FCRUS). Here, we administer a similar survey to replicate and extend our prior work in three key ways: 1) We broaden our participant base to citizens across the state of Pennsylvania in order to increase the diversity of our sample; 2) To replicate our prior work, we administer questionnaires identified in our first survey as significantly associated with financial susceptibility; and 3) we also asked questions to assess social, psychological, economic impacts related to COVID19. Thus the new survey includes self-report measures of financial exploitation, gullibility, social support, cognition, and health (see Measures). We will also continue to include hypothetical questions from the Ultimatum Game and the Trust Game to assess social preferences for fairness and trust. Survey responses will be collected from a Qualtrics integrated panel of 375 adults, aged 50 years and older. Our survey will continue to include questions aimed at gaining insight into personal finances and socioeconomic status. As with our prior submission, we will include questions to assess other sociodemographic variables (e.g., ethnicity, marital status, social network) and family history of Alzheimer’s Disease. Our primary analyses will aim to replicate our core findings from our first study while addressing two overarching research questions. First, which variables are associated with self-reported fraud? Second, are the links between sociodemographic factors (e.g., SES, health, etc.) and self-reported fraud moderated by other variables tied to social preferences, gullibility, social support, emotion regulation, and cognitive abilities? Our exploratory analyses will examine whether and how perceptions of COVID-19 are linked to fraud. Understanding how fraud is related to these variables in our survey will be a first step toward developing novel interventions that mitigate risk of financial exploitation in vulnerable groups and understand possible state-level interventions.

The Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS) is a longitudinal national study of adults in the United States that began in 1995. MIDUS consists of several projects, including Survey, Daily Diary, Cognitive, Biomarkers, and Neuroscience projects. The original MIDUS sample was assessed between 1995-1997 (MIDUS 1), again between 2004-2009 (MIDUS 2), and again starting in 2013 (data collection ongoing; MIDUS 3). To replenish the original sample, new participants were added to the protocol between 2011-2014 (MIDUS Refresher). This OSF page is intended to serve as the basis for several projects relating to the MIDUS 2 neuroscience project baseline EEG data. We outline here the details of how MIDUS 2 baseline EEG data were collected, cleaned, and processed by our group. Parts of the MIDUS Refresher EEG data have already been analyzed and made publicly available, and some hypotheses have already been tested by others in our group and will be noted when relevant in linked preregistrations. A clear delineation of what hypotheses have been tested and which have yet to be tested will be included when necessary.

To create suspenseful, dramatic or comical situations, filmmakers make creative decisions about the flow of story information: when, how and, most importantly, who to deliver information for it to come across effectively. They often use Dramatic Irony, a narrative device where the audience knows something that at least one characters does not, thereby creating drama and a divergence in perspectives in relation to the differential knowledge provided. Viewers are first shown the installation scenes that reveal the key information that the character(s) does not have access to and following, are shown the exploitation scenes that stage the dramatic irony conflict, in which the characters’ goals or wellbeing are impacted as a consequence of their ignorance e.g. misunderstandings or decoys. We hypothesized that the salient divergence of knowledge in dramatic irony scenes prompts spectators to infer the character’s mental states and thus proposed Theory of Mind (ToM) as a critical sociocognitive mechanism underlying the comprehension of dramatic irony. For the first time, we directly tested the hypothesis that ToM is implicated in film narratives by manipulating audience access to knowledge from the installation scenes (Study 1). In a between-subjects design, participants watched one of two knowledge conditions: in the Dramatic Irony condition, they watched 6 clips from different Harold Lloyd silent comedy films with complete scenes of dramatic irony (context, installation scene and exploitation scene); and in the Control condition, the installation scenes were edited out so participants only watched the context and exploitation scenes, which still maintained narrative coherence, allowing us to compare whether viewers process the same exploitation scenes engaging more in ToM reasoning when they know more than the character vs. when they do not. We hypothesized that if participants in the dramatic irony condition build a more complex event model, or alternatively different event models for character perspectives, there would be deeper moments of processing of the cognitive states in the exploitation scenes. This should be confirmed by delays or slowed-down moments in a novel self-paced viewing task as well as eye-tracking data: (a) pupil data as an indirect marker of processing load and (b) the analysis of spatio-temporal distribution of attention, i.e. what part of the images participants are processing differently across conditions, which would inform us about how participants extract information about characters’ mental states, and whether there are longer viewing times when event models are switched/updated to follow character perspectives.

This project is about the study entitled "Perturbation of Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Makes Power Holders Less Resistant to Tempting Bribes", led by Dr. Yang Hu and Dr. Jean-Claude Dreher.

Stage 1 IPA at Cortex

Theta-beta ratio (TBR) decreases with age and negatively predicts executive function, while theta increases with age and positively predicts executive function. This registration is specific to analyses of MIDUS2 initial baseline EEG data examining the role of theta and beta to age related differences in TBRs, and the potential influence of individual differences in peak alpha power to TBRs. UPDATE 06/01/2020: A math error was discovered in the description of how the TBR measures will be calculated. We will take the ratio of Theta and Beta power first, then log-normalize the subsequent ratio.

Positive peer environments can provide a context in which adolescents can learn and maintain social behavior and cognitive skills. This, in turn, promotes socioemotional competence and social acceptance during a time of rapid social change. Additionally, adolescent social reorientation towards peer relationships, and away from family, confers a heightened sensitivity to peer contexts. This renders adolescents particularly susceptible to the valence (positive or negative) of their social context. However, not all adolescents are equally susceptible to peer interactions, suggesting the potential for an underlying biomarker of susceptibility to peer environments. Based on previous work, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) may be such biomarker. Increased dACC activation has been shown during social exclusion compared to inclusion, which also plays a mechanistic role in the down-regulation of social distress during exclusion (Eisenberger et al., 2003). Additionally, previous work (Monk et al., 2003) has demonstrated that adolescents show increased dACC activation, compared to adults, when viewing negative emotional faces (relative to neutral faces). This highlights developmental differences in the activation of a brain region involved in social cognitive processing. As such, we propose to use data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD; 3.0 release) study to clarify the moderating role of adolescent dACC response to emotional stimuli on the associations between peer environments (positive and negative) and youths’ psychosocial outcomes (positive and negative). Findings from this pre-registered analysis have the potential to support the biological sensitivity to context theory by identifying a biomarker predictive of individual differences in psychosocial adjustment, for better or for worse. This has the potential to help identify youth most at risk or resilient to negative peer victimization, and those most responsive to supportive peer groups, for tailored interventions.

Background Health behaviors such as drinking, smoking, and physical activity can be influenced by peer behaviors within social groups (Sawka et al., 2013; Cruwys et al. 2015; Wang et al., 2016). Oftentimes, peer habits and norms shape behavior even in the absence of any peer explicitly attempting to influence behavior (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011). For example, simply seeing a peer who drinks frequently or exercises a lot may call to mind the social value of those behaviors and prompt one to have another drink or to workout more frequently. However, little is known about how the brain tracks information about the perceived health behaviors of others and activates this information in day to day contexts, e.g. when viewing peer faces. The current investigation investigates how the brain represents the perceived health habits of peers, such as alcohol use, within existing social groups. We will use multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to ask the following questions: (1) First, how does the brain support the ability to take the perspective of peers who engage in varying drinking habits (e.g. drink more vs. less than oneself)? Second, does the brain activate information about peer drinking habits even when passively viewing peer faces? And to what degree is this neural representation about peers shared across individuals vs. idiosyncratic? Answering these questions may provide insight into how individuals process information about others more generally and respond to health-related influences outside the laboratory. Moreover, this investigation provides an opportunity to bridge traditional health behavior theories (e.g., about social norms and social learning) with models of the social brain to predict individual differences in susceptibility to social influence. Current study The main goals of the study are twofold. First, we test (1) whether the brain encodes differences in thinking about peers who vary in their health behaviors– in this case, peers who drink more or less than oneself during explicit alcohol-related perspective-taking. (2) Second, we test whether the brain represents this information about peer drinking habits, spontaneously, when passively viewing peer faces within one’s existing social group. To examine these questions, we will combine data from two different fMRI tasks. Participants include 34 college students who were part of existing on-campus social groups and were recruited across two campus sites.

The Semiotics of the Message and the Messenger: How Non-Verbal Communication Affects Fairness Perception

Perceived social isolation (PSI), or as it is commonly termed - ‘loneliness’, refers to the subjective mismatch between the quantity and quality of social relationships one have and his/her preferences for social involvement. Recent social neuroscience conceptualizations emphasize that PSI is driven by one’s perception of his/her social relationships, which is affected by person’s attributions and cognitive biases, rather than by objective qualities of social relationships per se. Due to the significant impact of the PSI on multiple health outcomes and elevated mortality rates observed in lonely individuals (LI), loneliness is currently recognized as a major societal problem and burden for healthcare worldwide. However, little is known about precise neural or physiological mechanisms through which loneliness may impact mortality. PSI was shown to elicit specific cognitive mechanisms, including hypervigilance for social threats and reduced perspective taking, that may be linked to altered structure and function of crucial nodes of social perception (the posterior superior temporal sulcus; pSTS) and theory of mind (the temporoparietal junction; TPJ, the medial prefrontal cortex; mPFC) neural networks in LI. Furthermore, parasympathetic dysregulation, which may be reflected by reduced vagal flexibility in LI compared to non-lonely individuals (NLI) may be a plausible mechanism linking abnormal brain response to social threats with long term health effects of PSI. The goal of the current project is to examine the putative role of the decreased vagal flexibility as a physiological marker of the abnormal social information processing and social brain activity in LI.

Individual resting-state fMRI data can be used to create a functional connectome. These connectome fingerprints are robust across time and within individuals. In this study, we are investigating functional connectome similarity within 51 Dutch families.

fMRI paradigms studying deception have not included the social dimension and have been seldom interactive. We wish to study deception taking into consideration social closeness of the participants in an interactive paradigm as well as its relationship with loss aversion. This will be a task-fMRI and functional connectivity study, in a 3T Philips Ingenia scanner. The study is ongoing at the Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría "Ramon de la Fuente Muñiz" and the Faculty of Psychology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City

Over the last decade, the study of the characteristics of male perpetrators from a neuroscientific perspective has become increasingly relevant in the field of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) research. Literature has shown that male perpetrators present disturbances in different emotional processes that are at the basis of the violence they exert against their female partner/ex-partner. One of these processes is known as reappraisal, that is, an emotional regulation strategy that consists in re-evaluating or re-interpreting a situation in order to increase or decrease its emotional effect (Gross & John, 2003). Disturbances in this process have been also supported by a recent neuroimaging study (Marín-Morales et al., 2021) where they demonstrated that male perpetrators present a different brain activation during a reappraisal fMRI task in comparison to men convicted for crimes other than IPVAW and to men with no criminal records. Finally, it has also been shown that male perpetrators present a different resting connectivity compared to these two groups (other offenders and non-offenders men), and that this connectivity seems to be closely related to social cognitive processes, and in particular, to emotional regulation (Amaoui et al. In review). Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine for the first time how effective connectivity at rest may be related to reappraisal emotional regulation ability in male perpetrators and comparing it to men convicted for crimes other than IPVAW and men with no criminal records. For this purpose, we will conduct a spectral dynamic causal modelling (spDCM), between brain areas that have been strongly related to reappraisal (Morawetz et al. In review).

This project proposes a series of experimental studies to examine the use of Theory of Mind (ToM) in cinematic narrative understanding and in particular to investigate the cognitive processing of dramatic irony, as a proposed limit case of viewers’ ToM. Dramatic irony is a narrative device, often used in cinema, where the audience is shown critical facts ahead of one or more characters, thereby creating drama and a divergence in perspectives in relation to the differential knowledge provided. Understanding cinematic dramatic irony requires inferring and updating mental states in a dynamic way over time, integrating different sources of information, therefore capturing some of the richness and complexity that defines real-world ToM processing in comparison to classic psychological lab tasks which require participants to recognize false beliefs from highly-stylized and decontextualized images or cartoons.

Empathy is a complex social-cognitive ability that is best understood by distinguishing its emotional, cognitive and motivational dimensions, which from early childhood interact between the child and her/his social environment. To date, among the many factors that are acknowledged to influence the development of empathy, children's temperament and parenting behaviors have been identified as interacting in predicting the extent to which children demonstrate empathic responses. Recent studies in developmental social neuroscience cast light on the neural networks engaged in the development of each of the dimensions that constitute empathy, which are needed to navigate social interaction and establishing positive social relationships. Indeed, early deficits in empathic processes can lead to difficulties in socialization, particularly associated with reduced attention to others' emotions, especially when they are suffering, a lesser degree of remorse and guilt, and a greater tendency to ignore social norms or break the rules. Difficulties in socialization are particularly visible in two well-known developmental disorders: children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and children with conduct disorder and callous unemotional traits (CU). This paper provides a critical and selective review of recent empirical studies in psychopathology and developmental neuroscience by addressing the dimensions underlying empathy, specifically emotional sharing and caring for others. For children with ASD, some studies report that they pay less attention to another person in distress. However, functional neuroimaging studies conducted with ASD adolescents indicate that the emotional dimension appears to be preserved, but a lack of emotional self-regulation may impair them from experiencing empathic concern. Children with conduct disorder and CU traits clearly manifest a reduced autonomic nervous system response to others' distress or suffering. This may account for their disregard or contempt for others' well-being and social norms. Functional neuroimaging studies show that atypical patterns of brain activity at 15 months of age can predict later severe conduct disorder. Neural regions engaged in emotional processing such as the anterior cingulate cortex, insula and amygdala shown reduced activation to empathy-eliciting stimuli in children with CU. Finally, the genetic nature of CU traits is highlighted in several studies. We conclude by proposing several avenues for developmental research to identify biomarkers from an early age and by inviting to focus on psychological interventions with those populations accordingly.

Recent evidence suggests social cognitive deficits may be among the most profound and disabling consequences of childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, it is only over the last decade that this area has received increasing research attention. This study aims to systematically review all studies reporting on the effects of childhood TBI on social cognition. Meta-analytic techniques were employed to determine the magnitude of social cognitive deficits in childhood TBI. Literature searches were conducted in electronic databases (Medline/PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, EMBASE, PsycINFO and CINAHL) to retrieve relevant articles on social cognitive outcomes of paediatric TBI published from 2007-2019. The systematic review identified fourteen eligible studies, which examined the effect of paediatric TBI on five dimensions of social cognition, including emotion recognition or perception, theory of Mind (ToM), pragmatic language, moral reasoning, and social problem solving. Of these studies, eleven articles were included in subsequent meta-analyses, which included 482 children with TBI. Meta-analysis using a random-effects model revealed non-significant differences between TBI and typically developing (TD) control groups on measures of emotion perception or recognition. In contrast, children and adolescents with TBI performed significantly worse than control groups on ToM and pragmatic language tasks, with small and medium effect sizes, respectively (Hedge's g = -0.46; -0.73). Meta-regression indicated that post-injury social cognitive deficits were not moderated by child age. While the effect of time since injury was not statistically significant, poorer social cognitive outcomes are documented soon after injury. Despite relatively intact basic social cognitive skills (i.e. emotion perception or recognition) children and adolescents with TBI are vulnerable to deficits in higher-order aspects of social cognition, including ToM and pragmatic language. These findings underscore the importance of further research, using well-validated, standardised outcome instruments, in larger paediatric TBI samples. Furthermore, longitudinal prospective studies are needed to evaluate the respective contribution of injury and non-injury factors to individual variation in outcome and recovery of social cognition after paediatric TBI.

Atypical neural response to faces is thought to contribute to social deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Compared to typically developing (TD) controls, individuals with ASD exhibit delayed brain responses to upright faces at a face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP), the N170. Given observed differences in patterns of visual attention to faces, it is not known whether slowed neural processing may simply reflect atypical looking to faces. The present study manipulated visual attention to facial features to examine whether directed attention to the eyes normalizes N170 latency in ASD. ERPs were recorded in 30 children and adolescents with ASD as well as 26 TD children and adolescents. Results replicated prior findings of shorter N170 latency to the eye region of the face in TD individuals. In contrast, those with ASD did not demonstrate modulation of N170 latency by point of regard to the face. Group differences in latency were most pronounced when attention was directed to the eyes. Results suggest that well-replicated findings of N170 delays in ASD do not simply reflect atypical patterns of visual engagement with experimental stimuli. These findings add to a body of evidence indicating that N170 delays are a promising marker of atypical neural response to social information in ASD. LAY SUMMARY: This study looks at how children's and adolescents' brains respond when looking at different parts of a face. Typically developing children and adolescents processed eyes faster than other parts of the face, whereas this pattern was not seen in ASD. Children and adolescents with ASD processed eyes more slowly than typically developing children. These findings suggest that observed inefficiencies in face processing in ASD are not simply reflective of failure to attend to the eyes.

Changes in socio-emotional functioning in people living with dementia (PLWD) are common; however, little is known about the broader effects these may have on wellbeing. This study examined socio-emotional functioning over time and associations with the wellbeing of PLWD and their family carers.One hundred and one individuals with a diagnosis of dementia and their respective carers completed the Social Emotional Questionnaire (assessing emotion recognition, empathy, social relationships and social behaviour) alongside measures of dementia severity, cognition, mood, stress, and relationship quality. Sixty-six dyads were reassessed on the same measures at 12 months post-baseline, and 51 dyads again at 20 months post-baseline.When rated by the PLWD, there was no change in socio-emotional functioning over time; however, carers reported a significant decline over time. For both carers and the PLWD, poorer wellbeing measures were indicative of worse socio-emotional functioning at Time 1, though only dementia type, quality of life and relationship quality impacted upon the trajectory of socio-emotional decline over time.Changes in social and emotional functioning are evident early in the course of dementia and worsen within 20 months. Both carer characteristics and those of the PWLD affected reporting of social and emotional functioning. These data are useful for guiding the provision of appropriate education and care.

As robots advance from the pages and screens of science fiction into our homes, hospitals, and schools, they are poised to take on increasingly social roles. Consequently, the need to understand the mechanisms supporting human–machine interactions is becoming increasingly pressing. We introduce a framework for studying the cognitive and brain mechanisms that support human–machine interactions, leveraging advances made in cognitive neuroscience to link different levels of description with relevant theory and methods. We highlight unique features that make this endeavour particularly challenging (and rewarding) for brain and behavioural scientists. Overall, the framework offers a way to study the cognitive science of human–machine interactions that respects the diversity of social machines, individuals’ expectations and experiences, and the structure and function of multiple cognitive and brain systems.

Hyperscanning-the recording of brain activity from multiple individuals-can be hard to interpret. This paper shows how integrating behavioral data and mutual prediction models into hyperscanning studies can lead to advances in embodied social neuroscience.

Previous research has shown that observing another individual receiving a painful stimulus leads to motor facilitation as indexed by faster reaction times. The current study explores whether the type of action that is executed modulates this facilitation effect. Specifically, we examined whether approach-like and withdraw-like movements are differentially influenced by pain observation. In experiment 1, participants performed key presses (approach) and releases (withdraw) after observing another person in pain (vs. no pain). In experiment 2, participants used a joystick to make forward (approach) and backward (withdraw) movements after observing another person in pain (vs. no pain). Across both experiments, we did not find evidence for differential effects of pain observation on approach-like and withdraw-like movements. We do, however, report a robust response-general effect of pain observation on motor behaviour (i.e., faster reaction times after pain observation vs. no pain, regardless of movement type). We discuss these results in relation to the wider emotion, attention, and social neuroscience of empathy literatures.

The social neuroscience approach to prejudice investigates the psychology of intergroup bias by integrating models and methods of neuroscience with the social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Here, we review major contemporary lines of inquiry, including current accounts of group-based categorization; formation and updating of prejudice and stereotypes; effects of prejudice on perception, emotion, and decision making; and the self-regulation of prejudice. In each section, we discuss key social neuroscience findings, consider interpretational challenges and connections with the behavioral literature, and highlight how they advance psychological theories of prejudice. We conclude by discussing the next-generation questions that will continue to guide the social neuroscience approach toward addressing major societal issues of prejudice and discrimination.

Increases in cultural and religious diversity have led to calls for toleration of differences, although it is unclear how calling for toleration impacts people’s affective and attitudinal responses. The present research conducted in a small western nation examines if calling for toleration of Muslim minority practices elicits an aggressive backlash against the group amongst those relatively conservative, using relative left frontal EEG activity to examine the motivational processes involved. Non-Muslim participants from New Zealand (N = 172) self-reported their political orientation before being randomly assigned to a toleration or control condition involving writing and reflection tasks about Muslims. Participants then evaluated various groups including Muslims while EEG was recorded. Results revealed that among those relatively conservative, toleration produced higher levels of relative left frontal activity, which in turn led to more negative evaluations of Muslims (relative to control participants). However, for those relatively liberals, toleration had no impact on neuropsychological or attitudinal responses relative to controls. Collectively, these findings suggest that intergroup toleration may backfire amongst those relatively conservative, undermining its intended purpose.

Neurotransmitters play the role of electrochemical signalling molecules which are essential for suitable brain functioning. Their dysfunction causes several mental and health disorders. Neurotransmitters are present at a very low concentration in the nervous system and they are mixed with many other biochemical molecules. The precise detection and nursing of these molecules are pretty decisive in brain studies. This mini-review portrays the research on oxytocin and vasopressin as an exemplar for exploring the social neuroscience as the subject of social neuroscience has decisively explored the complex territory between perception and action. These neuropeptides, oxytocin and vasopressin are evolutionarily extremely conserved mediators in order to regulate the complex social cognition and behaviour. They play significant role in social interactions, in maternal care and closeness, development of general trust and cooperation, controlling of labor and breastfeeding, regulation of blood pressure, social recognition, sexual behaviours and response to stress. They find applications for several treatment approaches in mental disorders in the form of autism, borderline personality disorder, social anxiety disorder and schizophrenia.

Research on the psychological paths leading towards involvement in violent extremism and terrorism has not produced a consistent layout of traits describing recurrent dispositions or plausible vulnerabilities. Extremist/terrorizing violence can adopt many forms from lone-actor attacks to guerrilla actions and other war-like tactics, and such versatility defies unifying depictions. Advances achieved at identifying important elements of ingroup dynamics and commitment ties mediating the surge and activities of violent groups neglected individual factors. Recent research has re-established the relevance of individual temperament traits to explain the attraction, engagement and support to these combative coalitions and the different roles and involvement that people enact in them. This essay presents some of these research forefronts and proposes further integration between individuality-based measures with ingroup-related mechanisms when studying proneness to violent extremism. A merge between Personality and Forensic Psychology with Social Neuroscience appears as a particularly fruitful track to generate consistent advancement in the area.

Changes in social behavior are recognized as potential symptoms of behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and semantic dementia (SD), yet objective ways to assess these behaviors in natural social situations are lacking. This study takes a truly social (or second-person) approach and examines changes in real-world social behavior in different dementia syndromes, by analyzing non-scripted social interactions in bvFTD patients (n = 20) and SD patients (n = 20), compared to patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 20). Video recordings of 10-min conversations between patients and behavioral neurologists were analyzed for the presence of socially engaging (e.g., nodding, smiling, gesturing) and disengaging behavior (e.g., avoiding eye contact, self-grooming, interrupting). Results demonstrated disease-specific profiles, with bvFTD patients showing less nodding and more looking away than AD, and SD patients showing more gesturing than AD. A principal components analysis revealed the presence of four unobserved components, showing atypical disengaging patterns of behavior. Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed distinct neurobiological bases for each of these components, with the brain regions identified previously associated with behavior selection, abstract mentalization and processing of multi-sensory and socially-relevant information, in mediating socially engaging and disengaging behavior. This study demonstrates the utility of systematic behavioral observation of social interactions in the differential diagnosis of dementia.

Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. Humans make eye-contact to extract information about other people’s mental states, recruiting dedicated brain networks that process information about the self and others. Recent studies show that eye-contact increases the synchronization between two brains but do not consider its effects on activity within single brains. Here we investigate how eye-contact affects the frequency and direction of the synchronization within and between two brains and the corresponding network characteristics. We also evaluate the functional relevance of eye-contact networks by comparing inter- and intra-brain networks of friends vs. strangers and the direction of synchronization between leaders and followers. We show that eye-contact increases higher inter- and intra-brain synchronization in the gamma frequency band. Network analysis reveals that some brain areas serve as hubs linking within- and between-brain networks. During eye-contact, friends show higher inter-brain synchronization than strangers. Dyads with clear leader/follower roles demonstrate higher synchronization from leader to follower in the alpha frequency band. Importantly, eye-contact affects synchronization between brains more than within brains, demonstrating that eye-contact is an inherently social signal. Future work should elucidate the causal mechanisms behind eye-contact induced synchronization. BIAL Foundation (No. 138/18); Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.

Facial expressions and bodily movements form an integral part of social interactions. When two (or more) individuals form a temporary alliance, such as engaging in a conversation, their facial and bodily movements often display synchronized behavior, implying some sort of spatial and temporal alignment. It is now recognized that synchronization may be the cornerstone of successful social interactions, perhaps even more so than messages conveyed in overt speech acts.