Management Accountants’ Empathy and Their Violation of Fiduciary Duties: a Replication and Extension Study Using fMRI

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergeja Slapničar ◽  
Mina Ličen ◽  
Frank G. H. Hartmann ◽  
Anka Slana Ozimič ◽  
Grega Repovš
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Affective Empathy ◽  
Business Unit ◽  
Personal Interest ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Management Accountants ◽  
Personal Interests

Research shows that management accountants’ role to support business unit managers’ decision-making may cause them to succumb to managers’ pressures to misreport. Using electroencephalographic (EEG) evidence, Eskenazi, Hartmann and Rietdijk (2016) demonstrate the role of automatic emotional mimicry, which drives misreporting when managers’ personal interest is at stake, but not when BU interest is at stake. In this study, we aim to replicate this finding using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which enables us to separate affective from cognitive empathy. Thirty accounting professionals completed an emotion observation task during which empathy-related brain activity was recorded. We then explored accountants’ inclination to misreport using empathy-invoking accounting scenarios. We find that the inclination to misreport correlates with activation of cognitive empathy regions, but only for scenarios in which accountants misreport to serve business unit’s interests, rather than managers’ personal interests. We find no evidence for a role of affective empathy.

scholarly journals Choosing to Make an Effort: The Role of Striatum in Signaling Physical Effort of a Chosen Action

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 313-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. T. Kurniawan ◽  
B. Seymour ◽  
D. Talmi ◽  
W. Yoshida ◽  
N. Chater ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Choice Behavior ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Physical Effort ◽  
Actual Choice ◽  
Healthy Participants ◽  
High Effort ◽  
Future Choice

The possibility that we will have to invest effort influences our future choice behavior. Indeed deciding whether an action is actually worth taking is a key element in the expression of human apathy or inertia. There is a well developed literature on brain activity related to the anticipation of effort, but how effort affects actual choice is less well understood. Furthermore, prior work is largely restricted to mental as opposed to physical effort or has confounded temporal with effortful costs. Here we investigated choice behavior and brain activity, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, in a study where healthy participants are required to make decisions between effortful gripping, where the factors of force (high and low) and reward (high and low) were varied, and a choice of merely holding a grip device for minimal monetary reward. Behaviorally, we show that force level influences the likelihood of choosing an effortful grip. We observed greater activity in the putamen when participants opt to grip an option with low effort compared with when they opt to grip an option with high effort. The results suggest that, over and above a nonspecific role in movement anticipation and salience, the putamen plays a crucial role in computations for choice that involves effort costs.

scholarly journals Migraine Attacks as a Result of Hypothalamic Loss of Control

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Stankewitz ◽  
Leonie Keidel ◽  
Mathias Rehm ◽  
Stephanie Irving ◽  
Stephan Kaczmarz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Limbic System ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Perfusion ◽  
Loss Of Control ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Predominant Role ◽  
Cyclic Changes

AbstractTo assess the natural trajectory of brain activity over the migraine cycle, we assessed (1) the cerebral perfusion and (2) the hypothalamic connectivity during spontaneous headache attacks with follow-up recordings towards the next migraine attack. Using pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, 12 migraine patients were examined in 82 sessions. We detected cyclic changes of brain perfusion in the limbic circuit (insula, hippocampus, and nucleus accumbens), with the highest perfusion during headache attacks. In addition, we found an increase of hypothalamic connectivity to the limbic system over the interictal interval, then collapsing during the headache. Our data provide strong evidence for the predominant role of the hypothalamus as a zeitgeber for generating migraine attacks. Our findings suggest that migraine attacks are the result of the hypothalamus losing control over the limbic system.

scholarly journals Integrating additional knowledge into the estimation of graphical models

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunqi Bu ◽  
Johannes Lederer
Keyword(s):  
Graphical Models ◽  
Tuning Parameter ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Graphical Modeling ◽  
Standard Methods ◽  
Neighborhood Selection ◽  
Selection For ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Graphical models such as brain connectomes derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are considered a prime gateway to understanding network-type processes. We show, however, that standard methods for graphical modeling can fail to provide accurate graph recovery even with optimal tuning and large sample sizes. We attempt to solve this problem by leveraging information that is often readily available in practice but neglected, such as the spatial positions of the measurements. This information is incorporated into the tuning parameter of neighborhood selection, for example, in the form of pairwise distances. Our approach is computationally convenient and efficient, carries a clear Bayesian interpretation, and improves standard methods in terms of statistical stability. Applied to data about Alzheimer’s disease, our approach allows us to highlight the central role of lobes in the connectivity structure of the brain and to identify an increased connectivity within the cerebellum for Alzheimer’s patients compared to other subjects.

scholarly journals Adaptive brain activity changes during tongue movement with palatal coverage from fMRI data

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuka Inamochi ◽  
Kenji Fueki ◽  
Nobuo Usui ◽  
Masato Taira ◽  
Noriyuki Wakabayashi
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Motor Impairment ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Tongue Movement ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Oral Environment ◽  
Motor Dexterity ◽  
The Brain

AbstractSuccessful adaptation to wearing dentures with palatal coverage may be associated with cortical activity changes related to tongue motor control. The purpose was to investigate the brain activity changes during tongue movement in response to a new oral environment. Twenty-eight fully dentate subjects (mean age: 28.6-years-old) who had no experience with removable dentures wore experimental palatal plates for 7 days. We measured tongue motor dexterity, difficulty with tongue movement, and brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging during tongue movement at pre-insertion (Day 0), as well as immediately (Day 1), 3 days (Day 3), and 7 days (Day 7) post-insertion. Difficulty with tongue movement was significantly higher on Day 1 than on Days 0, 3, and 7. In the subtraction analysis of brain activity across each day, activations in the angular gyrus and right precuneus on Day 1 were significantly higher than on Day 7. Tongue motor impairment induced activation of the angular gyrus, which was associated with monitoring of the tongue’s spatial information, as well as the activation of the precuneus, which was associated with constructing the tongue motor imagery. As the tongue regained the smoothness in its motor functions, the activation of the angular gyrus and precuneus decreased.

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