People Newly in Love are More Responsive to Positive Feedback

2012 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Brown ◽  
Richard J. Beninger

Passionate love is associated with increased activity in dopamine-rich regions of the brain. Increased dopamine in these regions is associated with a greater tendency to learn from reward in trial-and-error learning tasks. This study examined the prediction that individuals who were newly in love would be better at responding to reward (positive feedback). In test trials, people who were newly in love selected positive outcomes significantly more often than their single (not in love) counterparts but were no better at the task overall. This suggests that people who are newly in love show a bias toward responding to positive feedback, which may reflect a general bias towards reward-seeking.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Vinales ◽  
Rene Quilodran ◽  
Emmanuel Procyk

Electrophysiological markers of performance monitoring are thought to reflect functioning of dedicated neural networks and neuromodulatory systems. Whether and how these markers are altered in neurological diseases and whether they can reflect particular cognitive deficits remains to be confirmed. Here we first tested whether the frontal medial feedback-related potential, evoked during a trial and error learning task, is changed in early Parkinson disease patients compared to control subjects. The potential was not changed in amplitude and discriminated negative and positive feedback as in controls. Feedback-related markers in Parkinsons patients also appeared in time-frequency analyses, unaltered in theta (3-7 Hz) band but reduced in beta (20-30 Hz) oscillations for positive feedback. Beta oscillations power appeared to be dramatically globally reduced during the task. Overall, our results show that Beta oscillation markers of performance monitoring captured by EEG are selectively altered in Parkinson disease patients, and that they are accompanied by changes in task-related oscillatory dynamics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernie Carter ◽  
Janine Arnott ◽  
Joan Simons ◽  
Lucy Bray

Children with profound cognitive impairment (PCI) are a heterogenous group who often experience frequent and persistent pain. Those people closest to the child are key to assessing their pain. This mixed method study aimed to explore how parents acquire knowledge and skills in assessing and managing their child’s pain. Eight mothers completed a weekly pain diary and were interviewed at weeks 1 and 8. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis and the quantitative data using descriptive statistics. Mothers talked of learning through a system of trial and error (“learning to get on with it”); this was accomplished through “learning to know without a rule book or guide”; “learning to be a convincing advocate”; and “learning to endure and to get things right.” Experiential and reflective learning was evident in the way the mothers developed a “sense of knowing” their child’s pain. They drew on embodied knowledge of how their child usually expressed and responded to pain to help make pain-related decisions. Health professionals need to support mothers/parents to develop their knowledge and skills and to gain confidence in pain assessment and they should recognise and act on the mothers’ concerns.


Much has been said at the symposium about the pre-eminent role of the brain in the continuing emergence of man. Tobias has spoken of its explosive enlargement during the last 1 Ma, and how much of its enlargement in individual ontogeny is postnatal. We are born before our brains are fully grown and ‘wired up ’. During our long adolescence we build up internal models of the outside world and of the relations of parts of our bodies to it and to one another. Neurons that are present at birth spread their dendrites and project axons which acquire their myelin sheaths, and establish innumerable contacts with other neurons, over the years. New connections are formed; genetically endowed ones are stamped in or blanked off. People born without arms may grow up to use their toes in skills that are normally manual. Tobias, Darlington and others have stressed the enormous survival value of adaptive behaviour and the ‘positive feedback’ relation between biological and cultural evolution. The latter, the unique product of the unprecedentedly rapid biological evolution of big brains, advances on a time scale unknown to biological evolution.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-Wei Li ◽  
Carol Yeh-Yun Lin ◽  
Ting-Ting Chang ◽  
Nai-Shing Yen ◽  
Danchi Tan

AbstractManagers face risk in explorative decision-making and those who are better at such decisions can achieve future viability. To understand what makes a manager effective at explorative decision-making requires an analysis of the manager’s motivational characteristics. The behavioral activation/inhibition system (BAS/BIS), fitting the motivational orientation of “approach” or “avoidance,” can affect individual decision-making. However, very little is known about the neural correlates of BAS/BIS orientation and their interrelationship with the mental activity during explorative decision-making. We conducted an fMRI study on 111 potential managers to investigate how the brain responses of explorative decision-making interact with BAS/BIS. Participants were separated into high- and low-performance groups based on the median exploration-score. The low-performance group showed significantly higher BAS than that of the high-performance group, and its BAS had significant negative association with neural networks related to reward-seeking during explorative decision-making. Moreover, the BIS of the low-performance group was negatively correlated with the activation of cerebral regions responding to risk-choice during explorative decision-making. Our finding showed that BAS/BIS was associated with the brain activation during explorative decision-making only in the low-performance group. This study contributed to the understanding of the micro-foundations of strategically relevant decision-making and has an implication for management development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-708
Author(s):  
Abha Chatterjee ◽  
Sasanka Sekhar Chanda ◽  
Sougata Ray

Purpose This paper aims to develop conceptual arguments questioning the efficacy of administration by the transaction cost economics (TCE) approach in an organization undergoing a major change. Design/methodology/approach The focus is on three distinct dimensions of organizational life where, as per prior research, TCE is likely to be inadequate: interdependence across transactions, high reliance on managerial foresight and inseparability of administrative decisions made at different points in time. Findings The climate of coercion and surveillance engendered by administration based on TCE approaches – that punishes deviation from goals, even when they are framed on inadequate knowledge – forestalls creative problem-solving that is necessary to address unforeseen developments that arise during change implementation. Fiat accomplishes within-group compliance in the change project sub-teams, but between-group interdependencies tend to be neglected, hampering organizational effectiveness. Moreover, attempts to create independent spheres of accountability for concurrent fiats regarding pre-existing and new commitments breed inefficiency and wastage. Research limitations/implications The malevolent aspects of TCE-based administration contribute to organizational dysfunctions like escalation of commitment and developing of silos in organizations. Practical implications To succeed in effecting a major organizational change, meaningful relaxation of demands for delivering on prior goals is required, along with forbearance of errors made during trial-and-error learning. Originality/value TCE-based administration is deleterious to an organization attempting a major change. Supremacy accorded to resolution of conflicts in distinct hierarchical relationships by the mechanism of fiat fails to address the needs of an organizational reality where multiple groups are engaged in a set of interdependent activities and where multiple, interdependent organizational imperatives need to be concurrently served.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romeo Rebusi ◽  
Joshua Phillipe Olorocisimo ◽  
Jeric Briones ◽  
Yasumi Ohta ◽  
Makito Haruta ◽  
...  

Fluorescence imaging devices have been indispensable in elucidating the workings of the brain in living animals, including unrestrained, active ones. Various devices are available, each with their own strengths and weaknesses in terms of many factors. We have developed CMOS-based needle-type imaging devices that are small and lightweight enough to be doubly implanted in freely moving mice. The design also allowed angled implantations to avoid critical areas. We demonstrated the utility of the devices by using them on GCaMP6 mice in a formalin test experiment. Simultaneous implantations to the capsular-lateral central amygdala (CeLC) and dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) were proven to be safe and did not hinder the execution of the study. Analysis of the collected calcium signaling data, supported by behavior data, showed increased activity in both regions as a result of pain stimulation. Thus, we have successfully demonstrated the various advantages of the device in its application in the pain experiment.


eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Vellani ◽  
Lianne P de Vries ◽  
Anne Gaule ◽  
Tali Sharot

Humans are motivated to seek information from their environment. How the brain motivates this behavior is unknown. One speculation is that the brain employs neuromodulatory systems implicated in primary reward-seeking, in particular dopamine, to instruct information-seeking. However, there has been no causal test for the role of dopamine in information-seeking. Here, we show that administration of a drug that enhances dopamine function (dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine; L-DOPA) reduces the impact of valence on information-seeking. Specifically, while participants under Placebo sought more information about potential gains than losses, under L-DOPA this difference was not observed. The results provide new insight into the neurobiology of information-seeking and generates the prediction that abnormal dopaminergic function (such as in Parkinson’s disease) will result in valence-dependent changes to information-seeking.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kóbor ◽  
Karolina Janacsek ◽  
Petra Hermann ◽  
Zsofia Zavecz ◽  
Vera Varga ◽  
...  

Previous research recognized that humans could extract statistical regularities of the environment to automatically predict upcoming events. However, it has remained unexplored how the brain encodes the distribution of statistical regularities if it continuously changes. To investigate this question, we devised an fMRI paradigm where participants (N = 32) completed a visual four-choice reaction time (RT) task consisting of statistical regularities. Two types of blocks involving the same perceptual elements alternated with one another throughout the task: While the distribution of statistical regularities was predictable in one block type, it was unpredictable in the other. Participants were unaware of the presence of statistical regularities and of their changing distribution across the subsequent task blocks. Based on the RT results, although statistical regularities were processed similarly in both the predictable and unpredictable blocks, participants acquired less statistical knowledge in the unpredictable as compared with the predictable blocks. Whole-brain random-effects analyses showed increased activity in the early visual cortex and decreased activity in the precuneus for the predictable as compared with the unpredictable blocks. Therefore, the actual predictability of statistical regularities is likely to be represented already at the early stages of visual cortical processing. However, decreased precuneus activity suggests that these representations are imperfectly updated to track the multiple shifts in predictability throughout the task. The results also highlight that the processing of statistical regularities in a changing environment could be habitual.


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