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Previous evidence has shown that, in a recognition memory task, emotion leads participants to make more false alarms and decreases response times (RTs) for false alarm responses. This pattern could arise because participants adopt more liberal responding for emotional stimuli and/or because emotional lures are more likely than neutral lures to produce misleading memory retrieval. Recently, Starns et al. designed a new recognition memory paradigm and found that the speed of memory errors shows the influence of misleading information resulting in unavoidable memory errors. This study investigates the basis of false alarms to emotional lures by testing predictions of the diffusion model for a recognition paradigm similar to that by Starns et al. Participants studied lists of emotional words and then completed an old-new recognition memory test. After each old-new decision, participants were asked to make a forced-choice recognition decision that provided a chance to correct possible errors on the preceding old-new decision. Under the assumption that emotion promotes misremembering, the diffusion model predicts that forced-choice accuracy should be lower for pairs with emotional versus neutral lures and that faster old-new errors should be associated with lower forced-choice accuracy. This study tested these predictions, providing theoretical insights into how emotion affects memory retrieval and further developing a new methodology for measuring recognition performance., Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) [53325897-115.02-121630], The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) within the scope of 2214-A International Research Fellowship Programme for PhD Students [grant number 53325897-115.02-121630].

Social neuroscience is unveiling how the brain coordinates the construal of social categories and the generation of intergroup biases from facial perception. Recent evidence indicates that social categorization is more sensitive and malleable to elemental facial features than previously assumed. At the same time, perception of social categories can be crafted by top-down factors, including prior knowledge, motivations, and social expectations. In this review, we summarize extant wisdom and propose a model that goes beyond traditional accounts that have conceived stereotypes and prejudices as the end result of “reading out” social categories in the face, and have assumed a hierarchical brain organization. Our model proposes recursive and dynamic interactions amid distant brain regions. Accordingly, the reciprocal exchange of sensory evidence and predictions biases and “explains away” visual input in face perception regions until a compromise is achieved and social perception stabilizes. Ideally, this effort would contribute to shape a research field at the interface between neural and social sciences, which is often referred to as social vision.

Social neuroscience is unveiling how the brain coordinates the construal of social categories and the generation of intergroup biases from facial perception. Recent evidence indicates that social categorization is more sensitive and malleable to elemental facial features than previously assumed. At the same time, perception of social categories can be crafted by top-down factors, including prior knowledge, motivations, and social expectations. In this review, we summarize extant wisdom and propose a model that goes beyond traditional accounts that have conceived stereotypes and prejudices as the end result of "reading out" social categories in the face, and have assumed a hierarchical brain organization. Our model proposes recursive and dynamic interactions amid distant brain regions. Accordingly, the reciprocal exchange of sensory evidence and predictions biases and "explains away" visual input in face perception regions until a compromise is achieved and social perception stabilizes. Ideally, this effort would contribute to shape a research field at the interface between neural and social sciences, which is often referred to as social vision.

Einleitung: Angststörungen zählen zu den psychischen Erkrankungen und äußern sich durch exzessive, übertriebene Angstreaktionen. Durch Dysfunktionen des nervalen Angstnetzwerkes kann es zu Angststörungen kommen. Die generalisierte Angststörung (GAS) zählt zu den häufigsten psychiatrischen Erkrankungen, neben der Depression und der Schizophrenie. Sie manifestiert sich durch exzessive Sorgen und Befürchtungen, in Bezug auf ein oder mehrere Themen des alltäglichen Lebens. Die funktionelle MRT wird zur Diagnostik der generalisierten Angststörung eingesetzt. Diese Methode erlaubt es, Gehirnaktivität mittels aufgabenbezogener Stimuli darzustellen. Mit Hilfe der fMRT und ihrer unterschiedlichen Paradigmen ist es möglich, Unterschiede in der Aktivierung der Gehirnareale, innerhalb des Angstnetzwerkes zu erkennen. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es die Forschungsfragen zu beantworten und einen genaueren Einblick in die fMRT zu gewähren. Methode: Die Arbeit basiert auf gezielter Literaturrecherche aus wissenschaftlichen Datenbanken (Science Direct, Pubmed, Springer Link). Die Studien werden aus vorwiegend high impact journals in die Synthese miteinbezogen. Studien, die sich mit der fMRT und deren Paradigmen bei der Diagnose der GAS beschäftigen, werden zur Erarbeitung der Forschungsfragen herangezogen. Ergebnisse: Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse zeigen erhöhte Aktivierungen der Amygdala, was auf eine größere Reaktionsfähigkeit auf negative Stimuli deutet und verminderte Aktivierungen des präfrontalen Cortex (PFC). Um die funktionellen Konnektivitäten darzustellen, wurden vermehrt Resting-state Paradigmen verwendet. Es kam zu höherer Konnektivität zwischen Amygdala und PFC, während sorgeninduzierter Paradigmen. Vermehrt wurde aber eine verminderte Konnektivität im Ruhezustand festgestellt. Zusammenfassend deuten die Studien darauf hin, dass die GAS mit Defiziten in Hirnregionen innerhalb des Angstnetzwerkes zusammenhängen könnte, was zu einer Überinterpretation einer Bedrohung führt. Diskussion: Durch die Verwendung von unterschiedlichen Paradigmen, kam es zu unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen. Trotzdem wurde es durch die fMRT möglich, die GAS besser zu verstehen. Dies ist vor allem für Präventionsstrategien und Behandlungsprogramme einer GAS von Vorteil, da so die Therapie individueller gestaltet werden kann. Purpose: Anxiety Disorders are mental illnesses and manifest themselves through excessive, exaggerated fear reactions. Dysfunctions of the neural anxiety network can lead to anxiety disorders. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, along with depression and schizophrenia. It manifests itself through excessive worries and apprehensions, related to one or more topics of everdayday life. Functional MRI is used for the diagnosis of GAD. This method allows brain activity to be displayed using task-related stimuli. With the help of fMRI and its different paradigms, it is possible to detect differences in the activation of brain areas within the anxiety network. The aim of this thesis was to answer the research questions and to provide a more detailed insight into fMRI. Materials and methods: The work is based on a targeted literature search from scientific databases (Science Direct, Pubmed, Springer Link). The studies are taken from mainly high impact journals. Studies that deal with fMRI and its paradigms in the diagnosis of GAD will be used to elaborate the research questions. Results: The main results show increased activations of the amygdala, indicating a greater responsiveness to negative stimuli, and decreased activations of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). In addition, there was increased connectivity between amygdala and PFC, while care-induced paradigms. However, decreased connectivity at rest was increasingly observed. In conclusion, the studies suggest that GAD may be related to deficits in brain regions within the anxiety network, leading to over-interpretation of a threat. Conclusion: The use of different paradigms also led to different results. Nevertheless, fMRI made it possible to better understand the GAD. This is especially advantageous for prevention strategies and treatment programs of a GAD, because this way the therapy can be designed more individually.

We effortlessly sort people into different racial groups from their visual appearance and implicitly generate racial bias affecting cognition and behavior. As these mental activities provide the proximate mechanisms for social behaviours, it becomes essential to understand the neural activity underlying differences between own-race and other-race visual categorization. Yet intrinsic limitations of individual neuroimaging studies, owing to reduced sample size, inclusion of multiple races, and interactions between races in the participants and in the displayed visual stimuli, dampens generalizability of results. In the present meta-analytic study, we applied multimodal techniques to partly overcome these hurdles, and we investigated the entire functional neuroimaging literature on race categorization, therefore including more than 2000 Black, White and Asian participants. Our data-driven approach shows that own- and other-race visual categorization involves partly segregated neural networks, with distinct connectivity and functional profiles, and defined hierarchical organization. Categorization of own-race mainly engages areas related to cognitive components of empathy and mentalizing, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the inferior frontal gyrus. These areas are functionally co-activated with cortical structures involved in auto-biographical memories and social knowledge. Conversely, other-race categorization recruits areas implicated in, and functionally connected with, visuo-attentive processing, like the fusiform gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule, and areas engaged in affective functions, like the amygdala. These results contribute to a better definition of the neural networks involved in the visual parcelling of social categories based on race, and help to situate these processes within a common neural space.

Background: Recent studies have shown that response inhibition is impaired in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and their unaffected siblings, suggesting that these deficits may be considered a cognitive endophenotype of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Structural and functional neural correlates of altered response inhibition have been identified in patients and siblings. This study aims to examine the functional integrity of the response inhibition network in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and their unaffected siblings. Methods: Forty-one unmedicated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, 17 of their unaffected siblings and 37 healthy controls performed a stop signal task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psycho-physiological interaction analysis was used to examine functional connectivity between the following regions of interest: the bilateral inferior frontal gyri, presupplementary motor area, subthalamic nuclei, inferior parietal lobes, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala. We then used dynamic causal modeling to investigate the directionality of the networks involved. Results: Patients, and to a lesser extent also their unaffected siblings, show altered connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the amygdala during response inhibition. The follow-up dynamic causal modeling suggests a bottom-up influence of the amygdala on the inferior frontal gyrus in healthy controls, whereas processing occurs top-down in patients with obsessive-compulsive, and in both directions in siblings. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that amygdala activation in obsessive-compulsive disorder interferes differently with the task-related recruitment of the inhibition network, underscoring the role of limbic disturbances in cognitive dysfunctions in obsessive-compulsive disorder. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Body language is a powerful indicator of others’ emotions in social interactions, with positive signals triggering approach and negative ones retreat and defensiveness. Intergroup and interracial factors can influence these interactions, sometimes leading to aggressive or even violent behaviour. Despite its obvious social relevance however, the interaction between body expression and race remains unexplored, with explanations of the impact of race being almost exclusively based on the role of race in face recognition. In the current fMRI study we scanned white European participants while they viewed affective (angry and happy) body postures of both same race (white) and other race (black) individuals. To assess the difference between implicit and explicit recognition participants performed either an explicit emotion categorisation task, or an irrelevant shape judgement task. Brain activity was modulated by race in a number of brain regions across both tasks. Race-related activity appeared to be task- as well as emotion- specific. Overall, the other-race effects appeared to be driven by positive emotions, while same-race effects were observed for negative emotions. A race specific effect was also observed in right amygdala reflecting increased activation for explicit recognition of angry white body expressions. Overall, these results provide the first clear evidence that race influences affective body perception.

Alexithymia is a trait characterized by a diminished capacity to describe and distinguish emotions and to fantasize; it is associated with reduced introspection and problems in emotion processing. The default mode network (DMN) is a network of brain areas that is normally active during rest and involved in emotion processing and self-referential mental activity, including introspection. We hypothesized that connectivity of the DMN might be altered in alexithymia. Twenty alexithymic and 18 non-alexithymic healthy volunteers underwent a resting state fMRI scan. Independent component analysis was used to identify the DMN. Differences in connectivity strength were compared between groups. Within the DMN, alexithymic participants showed lower connectivity within areas of the DMN (medial frontal and temporal areas) as compared to non-alexithymic participants. In contrast, connectivity in the high-alexithymic participants was higher for the sensorimotor cortex, occipital areas and right lateral frontal cortex than in the low-alexithymic participants. These results suggest a diminished connectivity within the DMN of alexithymic participants, in brain areas that may also be involved in emotional awareness and self-referential processing. On the other hand, alexithymia was associated with stronger functional connections of the DMN with brain areas involved in sensory input and control of emotion.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have shown that response inhibition is impaired in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and their unaffected siblings, suggesting that these deficits may be considered a cognitive endophenotype of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Structural and functional neural correlates of altered response inhibition have been identified in patients and siblings. This study aims to examine the functional integrity of the response inhibition network in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and their unaffected siblings. METHODS: Forty-one unmedicated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, 17 of their unaffected siblings and 37 healthy controls performed a stop signal task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psycho-physiological interaction analysis was used to examine functional connectivity between the following regions of interest: the bilateral inferior frontal gyri, presupplementary motor area, subthalamic nuclei, inferior parietal lobes, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala. We then used dynamic causal modeling to investigate the directionality of the networks involved. RESULTS: Patients, and to a lesser extent also their unaffected siblings, show altered connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the amygdala during response inhibition. The follow-up dynamic causal modeling suggests a bottom-up influence of the amygdala on the inferior frontal gyrus in healthy controls, whereas processing occurs top-down in patients with obsessive-compulsive, and in both directions in siblings. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that amygdala activation in obsessive-compulsive disorder interferes differently with the task-related recruitment of the inhibition network, underscoring the role of limbic disturbances in cognitive dysfunctions in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hum Brain Mapp 36:4064-4075, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with biased memory formation for mood-congruent information, which may be related to altered monoamine levels. The piccolo (PCLO) gene, involved in monoaminergic neurotransmission, has previously been linked to depression in a genome-wide association study. Here, we investigated the role of the PCLO risk allele on functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) correlates of emotional memory in a sample of 89 MDD patients (64 PCLO risk allele carriers) and 29 healthy controls (18 PCLO risk allele carriers). During negative word encoding, risk allele carriers showed significant lower activity relative to non-risk allele carriers in the insula, and trend-wise in the anterior cingulate cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. Moreover, depressed risk allele carriers showed significant lower activity relative to non-risk allele carriers in the striatum, an effect which was absent in healthy controls. Finally, amygdalar response during processing new positive words vs. known words was blunted in healthy PCLO+ carriers and in MDD patients irrespective of genotype, which may indicate that signalling of salient novel information does not occur to the same extent in PCLO+ carriers and MDD patients. The PCLO risk allele may increase vulnerability for MDD by modulating local brain function with regard to responsiveness to salient stimuli (i.e. insula) and processing novel negative information. Also, depression-specific effects of PCLO on dorsal striatal activation during negative word encoding and the absence of amygdalar salience signalling for novel positive information further suggest a role of PCLO in symptom maintenance in MDD. © 2013 Woudstra et al.

Translational psychiatry 2012(2), e99 (2012). doi:10.1038/tp.2012.29, Published by Nature Publishing Group, London