scholarly journals Adolescents growing up amidst intractable conflict attenuate brain response to pain of outgroup

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (48) ◽  
pp. 13696-13701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Levy ◽  
Abraham Goldstein ◽  
Moran Influs ◽  
Shafiq Masalha ◽  
Orna Zagoory-Sharon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Regional Conflict ◽  
Automatic Response ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Neural Marker ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts

Adolescents’ participation in intergroup conflicts comprises an imminent global risk, and understanding its neural underpinnings may open new perspectives. We assessed Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian adolescents for brain response to the pain of ingroup/outgroup protagonists using magnetoencephalography (MEG), one-on-one positive and conflictual interactions with an outgroup member, attitudes toward the regional conflict, and oxytocin levels. A neural marker of ingroup bias emerged, expressed via alpha modulations in the somatosensory cortex (S1) that characterized an automatic response to the pain of all protagonists followed by rebound/enhancement to ingroup pain only. Adolescents’ hostile social interactions with outgroup members and uncompromising attitudes toward the conflict influenced this neural marker. Furthermore, higher oxytocin levels in the Jewish-Israeli majority and tighter brain-to-brain synchrony among group members in the Arab-Palestinian minority enhanced the neural ingroup bias. Findings suggest that in cases of intractable intergroup conflict, top-down control mechanisms may block the brain’s evolutionary-ancient resonance to outgroup pain, pinpointing adolescents’ interpersonal and sociocognitive processes as potential targets for intervention.

scholarly journals One Tap at a Time: Correlating Sensorimotor Synchronization with Brain Signatures of Temporal Processing

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina M D’Andrea-Penna ◽  
John R Iversen ◽  
Andrea A Chiba ◽  
Alexander K Khalil ◽  
Victor H Minces
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Processing ◽  
Sensorimotor Synchronization ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Hyperactivity Disorder ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Timing Ability ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Neural Marker ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Potential Complex

Abstract The ability to integrate our perceptions across sensory modalities and across time, to execute and coordinate movements, and to adapt to a changing environment rests on temporal processing. Timing is essential for basic daily tasks, such as walking, social interaction, speech and language comprehension, and attention. Impaired temporal processing may contribute to various disorders, from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia to Parkinson’s disease and dementia. The foundational importance of timing ability has yet to be fully understood; and popular tasks used to investigate behavioral timing ability, such as sensorimotor synchronization (SMS), engage a variety of processes in addition to the neural processing of time. The present study utilizes SMS in conjunction with a separate passive listening task that manipulates temporal expectancy while recording electroencephalographic data. Participants display a larger N1-P2 evoked potential complex to unexpected beats relative to temporally predictable beats, a differential we call the timing response index (TRI). The TRI correlates with performance on the SMS task: better synchronizers show a larger brain response to unexpected beats. The TRI, derived from the perceptually driven N1-P2 complex, disentangles the perceptual and motor components inherent in SMS and thus may serve as a neural marker of a more general temporal processing.

scholarly journals Collectively biased representations of the past: Ingroup Bias in Wikipedia articles about intergroup conflicts

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aileen Oeberst ◽  
Ina Beck ◽  
Christina Matschke ◽  
Toni Alexander Ihme ◽  
Ulrike Cress
Keyword(s):  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts

scholarly journals Exploitative leaders incite intergroup warfare in a social mammal

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (47) ◽  
pp. 29759-29766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rufus A. Johnstone ◽  
Michael A. Cant ◽  
Dominic Cram ◽  
Faye J. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Female Group ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Fitness Consequences ◽  
Model Predictions ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Mean Fitness ◽  
Fitness Benefits ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts ◽  
Term Data

Collective conflicts among humans are widespread, although often highly destructive. A classic explanation for the prevalence of such warfare in some human societies is leadership by self-serving individuals that reap the benefits of conflict while other members of society pay the costs. Here, we show that leadership of this kind can also explain the evolution of collective violence in certain animal societies. We first extend the classic hawk−dove model of the evolution of animal aggression to consider cases in which a subset of individuals within each group may initiate fights in which all group members become involved. We show that leadership of this kind, when combined with inequalities in the payoffs of fighting, can lead to the evolution of severe intergroup aggression, with negative consequences for population mean fitness. We test our model using long-term data from wild banded mongooses, a species characterized by frequent intergroup conflicts that have very different fitness consequences for male and female group members. The data show that aggressive encounters between groups are initiated by females, who gain fitness benefits from mating with extragroup males in the midst of battle, whereas the costs of fighting are borne chiefly by males. In line with the model predictions, the result is unusually severe levels of intergroup violence. Our findings suggest that the decoupling of leaders from the costs that they incite amplifies the destructive nature of intergroup conflict.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of ingroup bias for prosociality in rats

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal ◽  
Jocelyn M Breton ◽  
Huanjie Sheng ◽  
Kimberly LP Long ◽  
Stella Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Helping Behavior ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Shared Network ◽  
In Vivo Calcium Imaging ◽  
Central Network

Prosocial behavior, in particular helping others in need, occurs preferentially in response to distress of one’s own group members. In order to explore the neural mechanisms promoting mammalian helping behavior, a discovery-based approach was used here to identify brain-wide activity correlated with helping behavior in rats. Demonstrating social selectivity, rats helped others of their strain (‘ingroup’), but not rats of an unfamiliar strain (‘outgroup’), by releasing them from a restrainer. Analysis of brain-wide neural activity via quantification of the early-immediate gene c-Fos identified a shared network, including frontal and insular cortices, that was active in the helping test irrespective of group membership. In contrast, the striatum was selectively active for ingroup members, and activity in the nucleus accumbens, a central network hub, correlated with helping. In vivo calcium imaging showed accumbens activity when rats approached a trapped ingroup member, and retrograde tracing identified a subpopulation of accumbens-projecting cells that was correlated with helping. These findings demonstrate that motivation and reward networks are associated with helping an ingroup member and provide the first description of neural correlates of ingroup bias in rodents.

Violent CRED s toward Out-Groups Increase Trustworthiness: Preliminary Experimental Evidence

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 262-281
Author(s):  
Dan Řezníček ◽  
Radek Kundt
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Cultural Model ◽  
Know How ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract In the process of cultural learning, people tend to acquire mental representations and behavior from prestigious individuals over dominant ones, as prestigious individuals generously share their expertise and know-how to gain admiration, whereas dominant ones use violence, manipulation, and intimidation to enforce obedience. However, in the context of intergroup conflict, violent thoughts and behavior that are otherwise associated with dominance can hypothetically become prestigious because parochial altruists, who engage in violence against out-groups, act in the interest of their group members, therefore prosocially. This shift would imply that for other in-groups, individuals behaving violently toward out-groups during intergroup conflicts become simultaneously prestigious, making them desirable cultural models to learn from. Using the mechanism of credibility enhancing displays (CRED s), this article presents preliminary vignette-based evidence that violent CRED s toward out-groups during intergroup conflict increase the perceived trustworthiness of a violent cultural model.

Adolescent rats extend help to outgroup members, highlighting a neural network for group identity categorization.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Breton ◽  
Jordan S. Eisner ◽  
Vaidehi S. Gandhi ◽  
Natalie Musick ◽  
Aileen Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Helping Behavior ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Adult Rats ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Adolescent Rats ◽  
Functional Modulation ◽  
Increased Activity

Prosocial behavior, in particular helping others in need, occurs preferentially in response to the perceived distress of one's own group members, or ingroup. The development of neural mechanisms underlying social selectivity towards ingroup members are not well established. Here, we used a rat helping behavior test to explore the development and neural basis of ingroup bias for prosocial behavior in adolescent rats. We previously found that adult rats selectively help others from their own social group, and that this selectivity is associated with activation in reward and motivation circuits. Surprisingly, we found that adolescent rats helped both ingroup and outgroup members, evidence suggesting that ingroup bias emerges in adulthood. Analysis of brain-wide neural activity, indexed by expression of the early-immediate gene c-Fos, revealed increased activity for ingroup members across a broad set of regions, which was congruent for adults and adolescents. However, adolescents showed reduced hippocampal and insular activity, and increased orbitofrontal cortex activity compared to adults. Adolescent rats who did not help trapped others also demonstrated increased amygdala connectivity. Together, these findings demonstrate that biases for group-dependent prosocial behavior develop with age in rats and suggest that specific brain regions contribute to this prosocial selectivity, overall pointing to possible targets for the functional modulation of ingroup bias.

scholarly journals Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian P. H. Speer ◽  
Ale Smidts ◽  
Maarten A. S. Boksem
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Automatic Response ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

There is a long-standing debate regarding the cognitive nature of (dis)honesty: Is honesty an automatic response or does it require willpower in the form of cognitive control in order to override an automatic dishonest response. In a recent study (Speer et al., 2020), we proposed a reconciliation of these opposing views by showing that activity in areas associated with cognitive control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), helped dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it enabled cheating for honest participants. These findings suggest that cognitive control is not needed to be honest or dishonest per se but that it depends on an individual’s moral default. However, while our findings provided insights into the role of cognitive control in overriding a moral default, they did not reveal whether overriding honest default behavior (non-habitual dishonesty) is the same as overriding dishonest default behavior (non-habitual honesty) at the neural level. This speaks to the question as to whether cognitive control mechanisms are domain-general or may be context specific. To address this, we applied multivariate pattern analysis to compare neural patterns of non-habitual honesty to non-habitual dishonesty. We found that these choices are differently encoded in the IFG, suggesting that engaging cognitive control to follow the norm (that cheating is wrong) fundamentally differs from applying control to violate this norm.

scholarly journals The role of identity transformations in comparative victim beliefs? Evidence from South Sudanese diaspora

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1021-1043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Sinayobye Twali
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Identity Transformation ◽  
South Sudanese ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts ◽  
Collective Victimhood ◽  
Identity Transformations

There has been a growing interest in the study on collective victimhood and this research has increased our knowledge on how victim groups construe their victimization relative to other groups. However, most of this research has assumed that the groups involved in these construals were pre-existing prior to the conflict and remained fixed during and after the conflict. This study aimed to examine how conflict facilitates the transformation of social identities (i.e., how ingroups and outgroups are construed) and how these transformed social identities are used by group members in their construals of comparative victim beliefs. Eighteen South Sudanese immigrants were interviewed about their experiences during the Sudan civil wars. Thematic analysis revealed two broader themes: “1) “who is ‘us’ versus ‘them’?” (i.e., identity transformation in light of collective victimization and privilege; 2) “what happened to us?” (i.e., construal of ingroup victimization relative to other groups). These findings demonstrate the complexity in how immigrant groups construe social identities constructed in the context of intergroup conflicts, and how these transformed identities are then used in their construals of collective victimhood.

scholarly journals The neural underpinnings of intergroup social cognition: an fMRI meta-analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrington C Merritt ◽  
Jennifer K MacCormack ◽  
Andrea G Stein ◽  
Kristen A Lindquist ◽  
Keely A Muscatell
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Emotion Perception ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Exogenous Attention ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Neural Underpinnings

Abstract Roughly 20 years of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have investigated the neural correlates underlying engagement in social cognition (e.g. empathy and emotion perception) about targets spanning various social categories (e.g. race and gender). Yet, findings from individual studies remain mixed. In the present quantitative functional neuroimaging meta-analysis, we summarized across 50 fMRI studies of social cognition to identify consistent differences in neural activation as a function of whether the target of social cognition was an in-group or out-group member. We investigated if such differences varied according to a specific social category (i.e. race) and specific social cognitive processes (i.e. empathy and emotion perception). We found that social cognition about in-group members was more reliably related to activity in brain regions associated with mentalizing (e.g. dorsomedial prefrontal cortex), whereas social cognition about out-group members was more reliably related to activity in regions associated with exogenous attention and salience (e.g. anterior insula). These findings replicated for studies specifically focused on the social category of race, and we further found intergroup differences in neural activation during empathy and emotion perception tasks. These results help shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition across group lines.

Rapid Neural Polyphenism in Cephalopods

2018 ◽  
pp. 700-716
Author(s):  
Roger T. Hanlon ◽  
Chuan-Chin Chiao
Keyword(s):  
Neural Control ◽  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
System Modeling ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Complex Behavior ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Visual Background ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Made In

Octopus, squid, and cuttlefish can change their appearance (phenotype) in 200–700 msec due to neural control of chromatophore organs, iridophore cells, and three-dimensional papillae in their elaborate skin. Great strides have been made in determining the primary visual background stimuli that guide camouflage skin patterning in cuttlefish, yet many key details remain unknown. The current behavioral/psychophysical experimental paradigm developed in cuttlefish needs to be expanded to octopus and squid, which will potentially elucidate general principles governing complex behaviors such as communication and camouflage. The neural underpinnings of this dynamic polyphenic system are poorly known. Peripheral control mechanisms of chromatophores and iridophores have been elucidated recently, but central nervous system experimentation has lagged far behind; both aspects require targeted neurobiological study, genomic approaches, and system modeling. The unusual neuroanatomy and complex behavior of these marine invertebrates provide an opportunity to discover novel mechanisms of visual perception, decision-making, and motor output.

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