scholarly journals Social network positions, trust behavior and its neural mechanisms in young adolescents

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hester Sijtsma ◽  
Mariet van Buuren ◽  
Miriam Hollarek ◽  
Reubs J Walsh ◽  
Nikki Lee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
Young Adolescents ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Current Interaction ◽  
Fmri Analysis ◽  
Reward Network ◽  
Increased Activity

Assessing the trustworthiness of others to learn who you can and cannot trust is important for social relationships. During early adolescence, the social environment becomes increasingly complex. The number and nature of one’s friendships may help to shape, and may be facilitated by, adequate trust behavior. In the current fMRI study, we investigated in 49 young adolescents (Mage=12.8, SDage=0.4, 18 boys) the ability to adapt trust behavior when interacting with an untrustworthy partner as well as the neural mechanisms of trust using a trust game. Furthermore, we examined how trust behavior, the neural mechanisms of trust, and the position in a social network are related. Results indicate that adolescents decreased their trust behavior throughout the game. fMRI analysis showed no increased activity in regions of interest when making trust decisions. When receiving feedback, increased activity in the cognitive control and reward network was shown. Furthermore, less central social network positions (eigencentrality) were associated with lower overall trust behavior, which was the better strategy in the current interaction. In contrast, eigencentrality was not related to the adaptation of trust behavior or to brain activity. The current study provides insights in trust behavior and the neural mechanisms of trust in young adolescents.

scholarly journals Dissociating Neural Correlates of Action Monitoring and Metacognition of Agency

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (11) ◽  
pp. 3620-3636 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Miele ◽  
Tor D. Wager ◽  
Jason P. Mitchell ◽  
Janet Metcalfe
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Dorsal Striatum ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Action Monitoring ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Metacognitive Judgments ◽  
The Right ◽  
Reflective Processing ◽  
Increased Activity ◽  
The Brain

Judgments of agency refer to people's self-reflective assessments concerning their own control: their assessments of the extent to which they themselves are responsible for an action. These self-reflective metacognitive judgments can be distinguished from action monitoring, which involves the detection of the divergence (or lack of divergence) between observed states and expected states. Presumably, people form judgments of agency by metacognitively reflecting on the output of their action monitoring and then consciously inferring the extent to which they caused the action in question. Although a number of previous imaging studies have been directed at action monitoring, none have assessed judgments of agency as a potentially separate process. The present fMRI study used an agency paradigm that not only allowed us to examine the brain activity associated with action monitoring but that also enabled us to investigate those regions associated with metacognition of agency. Regarding action monitoring, we found that being “out of control” during the task (i.e., detection of a discrepancy between observed and expected states) was associated with increased brain activity in the right TPJ, whereas being “in control” was associated with increased activity in the pre-SMA, rostral cingulate zone, and dorsal striatum (regions linked to self-initiated action). In contrast, when participants made self-reflective metacognitive judgments about the extent of their own control (i.e., judgments of agency) compared with when they made judgments that were not about control (i.e., judgments of performance), increased activity was observed in the anterior PFC, a region associated with self-reflective processing. These results indicate that action monitoring is dissociable from people's conscious self-attributions of control.

scholarly journals Religious Belief and Cognitive Conflict Sensitivity: A Preregistered fMRI Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Hoogeveen ◽  
Lukas Snoek ◽  
Michiel van Elk
Keyword(s):  
Stroop Task ◽  
Cognitive Conflict ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Standardized Measures ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Informational Conflict ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Increased Activity

AbstractIn the current preregistered fMRI study, we investigated the relationship between religiosity and behavioral and neural mechanisms of conflict processing, as a conceptual replication of the study by Inzlicht et al. (2009). Participants (N = 193) performed a gender-Stroop task and afterwards completed standardized measures to assess their religiosity. As expected, the task induced cognitive conflict at the behavioral level and at a neural level this was reflected in increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). However, individual differences in religiosity were not related to performance on the Stroop task as measured in accuracy and interference effects, nor to neural markers of response conflict (correct responses vs. errors) or informational conflict (congruent vs. incongruent stimuli). Overall, we obtained moderate to strong evidence in favor of the null hypotheses that religiosity is unrelated to cognitive conflict sensitivity. We discuss the implications for the neuroscience of religion and emphasize the importance of designing studies that more directly implicate religious concepts and behaviors in an ecologically valid manner.

scholarly journals Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Processing of Complex Sentences: An fMRI Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-248
Author(s):  
Margreet Vogelzang ◽  
Christiane M. Thiel ◽  
Stephanie Rosemann ◽  
Jochem W. Rieger ◽  
Esther Ruigendijk
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Complex Object ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Increased Activity

Previous research has shown effects of syntactic complexity on sentence processing. In linguistics, syntactic complexity (caused by different word orders) is traditionally explained by distinct linguistic operations. This study investigates whether different complex word orders indeed result in distinct patterns of neural activity, as would be expected when distinct linguistic operations are applied. Twenty-two older adults performed an auditory sentence processing paradigm in German with and without increased cognitive load. The results show that without increased cognitive load, complex sentences show distinct activation patterns compared with less complex, canonical sentences: complex object-initial sentences show increased activity in the left inferior frontal and temporal regions, whereas complex adjunct-initial sentences show increased activity in occipital and right superior frontal regions. Increased cognitive load seems to affect the processing of different sentence structures differently, increasing neural activity for canonical sentences, but leaving complex sentences relatively unaffected. We discuss these results in the context of the idea that linguistic operations required for processing sentence structures with higher levels of complexity involve distinct brain operations.

scholarly journals Increased insula activity precedes the formation of subjective Gestalt

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilena Wilding ◽  
Christof Koerner ◽  
Anja Ischebeck ◽  
Natalia Zaretskaya
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Input ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Superior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Increased Activity ◽  
Rare Opportunity

The constructive nature of human perception sometimes leads us to perceiving rather complex impressions from simple sensory input. Bistable stimuli give us a rare opportunity to study the neural mechanisms behind this process. Such stimuli can be visually interpreted as simple or as more complex on the basis of the same sensory input. Previous studies demonstrated increased activity in the superior parietal cortex when participants perceived an illusory Gestalt impression compared to a simpler interpretation of individual elements. Here we tested whether activity related to the illusory Gestalt can be detected not only during, but also prior to it, by examining the slow fluctuations of resting-state-fMRI activity before the stimulus onset. We presented 31 participants with a bistable motion stimulus, which can be perceived either as four moving dot pairs (local) or two moving illusory squares (global). This allowed us to isolate the specific neural mechanisms that accompany the experience of an illusion under matched sensory input. fMRI was used to measure brain activity in a sparse event-related design. We observed stronger IPS and putamen responses to the stimulus when participants perceived the global interpretation compared to local, confirming the previously reported role of these areas in perceptual grouping. Most importantly, we also observed that the global stimulus interpretation was preceded by an increased activity of the bilateral dorsal insula, which is known to process saliency and gate information for conscious access. Our data suggest an important role of the dorsal insula in shaping an internally generated illusory Gestalt percept.

The Effects of CCRC on Cognition and Brain Activity in aMCI Patients: A Pilot Placebo Controlled BOLD fMRI Study

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 484-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junying Zhang ◽  
Zijing Wang ◽  
Shijun Xu ◽  
Yaojing Chen ◽  
Kewei Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Bold Fmri ◽  
Fmri Study

scholarly journals Differences in empathy toward patients between medical and nonmedical students: an fMRI study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shin Ah Kim ◽  
Young-Mee Lee ◽  
Stephan Hamann ◽  
Sang Hee Kim
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Patient Perspective ◽  
Medical Curriculum ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Functional Brain Imaging ◽  
Temporal Region ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Imaging Results ◽  
Increased Activity

AbstractThere is growing concern about a potential decline in empathy among medical students over time. Despite the importance of empathy toward patients in medicine, it remains unclear the nature of the changes in empathy among medical students. Thus, we systematically investigated affective and cognitive empathy for patients among medical students using neuroscientific approach. Nineteen medical students who completed their fifth-year medical curriculum and 23 age- and sex-matched nonmedical students participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Inside a brain scanner, all participants read empathy-eliciting scenarios while adopting either the patient or doctor perspective. Brain activation and self-reported ratings during the experience of empathy were obtained. Behavioral results indicated that all participants reported greater emotional negativity and empathic concern in association with the patient perspective condition than with the doctor perspective condition. Functional brain imaging results indicated that neural activity in the posterior superior temporal region implicated in goal-relevant attention reorienting was overall increased under the patient perspective than the doctor perspective condition. Relative to nonmedical students, medical students showed decreased activity in the temporoparietal region implicated in mentalizing under the patient perspective versus doctor perspective condition. Notably, this same region showed increased activity under the doctor versus patient condition in medical students relative to nonmedical students. This study is among the first to investigate the neural mechanisms of empathy among medical students and the current findings point to the cognitive empathy system as the locus of the primary brain differences associated with empathy toward patients.

scholarly journals DOES BRAIN ACTIVATION DURING FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT TASKS DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN GOOD AND BAD MOVERS? AN INTEGRATED NEUROIMAGING ASSESSMENT OF MOTOR CONTROL IN YOUNG ATHLETES

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7_suppl3) ◽  
pp. 2325967121S0013
Author(s):  
Manish Anand ◽  
Jed A. Diekfuss ◽  
Dustin R. Grooms ◽  
Alexis B. Slutsky-Ganesh ◽  
Scott Bonnette ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Range Of Motion ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Sagittal Plane ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Frontal Plane ◽  
Acl Injury ◽  
Timing Error ◽  
Lingual Gyrus ◽  
Increased Activity

Background: Aberrant frontal and sagittal plane knee motor control biomechanics contribute to increased anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk. Emergent data further indicates alterations in brain function may underlie ACL injury high risk biomechanics and primary injury. However, technical limitations have limited our ability to assess direct linkages between maladaptive biomechanics and brain function. Hypothesis/Purpose: (1) Increased frontal plane knee range of motion would associate with altered brain activity in regions important for sensorimotor control and (2) increased sagittal plane knee motor control timing error would associate with altered activity in sensorimotor control brain regions. Methods: Eighteen female high-school basketball and volleyball players (14.7 ± 1.4 years, 169.5 ± 7 cm, 65.8 ± 20.5 kg) underwent brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a bilateral, combined hip, knee, and ankle flexion/extension movements against resistance (i.e., leg press) Figure 1(a). The participants completed this task to a reference beat of 1.2 Hz during four movement blocks of 30 seconds each interleaved in between 5 rest blocks of 30 seconds each. Concurrent frontal and sagittal plane range of motion (ROM) kinematics were measured using an MRI-compatible single camera motion capture system. Results: Increased frontal plane ROM was associated with increased brain activity in one cluster extending over the occipital fusiform gyrus and lingual gyrus ( p = .003, z > 3.1). Increased sagittal plane motor control timing error was associated with increased brain activity in multiple clusters extending over the occipital cortex (lingual gyrus), frontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex ( p < .001, z > 3.1); see Figure 1 (b). Conclusion: The associations of increased knee frontal plane ROM and sagittal plane timing error with increased activity in regions that integrate visuospatial information may be indicative of an increased propensity for knee injury biomechanics that are, in part, driven by reduced spatial awareness and an inability to adequately control knee abduction motion. Increased activation in these regions during movement tasks may underlie an impaired ability to control movements (i.e., less neural efficiency), leading to compromised knee positions during more complex sports scenarios. Increased activity in regions important for cognition/attention associating with motor control timing error further indicates a neurologically inefficient motor control strategy. [Figure: see text]

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