scholarly journals Inagaki & Ross (in press): Giving targeted versus untargeted support

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristen Inagaki ◽  
Lauren Ross
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Septal Area ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Amygdala Activity ◽  
Theoretical Test

Objective. Giving support contributes to the link between social ties and health, however, the neural mechanisms are not known. Giving support in humans may rely on neural regions implicated in parental care in animals. The current studies, therefore, assess the contribution of parental care-related neural regions to giving support in humans and, as a further theoretical test, examine whether the benefits of giving targeted support to single, identifiable individuals in need extends to giving untargeted support to larger societal causes. Methods. For Study 1 (n = 45, M age = 21.98 (3.29), 69% females), participants completed a giving support task followed by an emotional faces task in the fMRI scanner. For Study 2 (n = 382, M age=43.03 (7.28), 52% females), participants self-reported on their giving support behavior and completed an emotional faces task in the fMRI scanner. Results. In Study 1, giving targeted (vs. untargeted) support resulted in greater feelings of social connection and support effectiveness. Further, greater septal area (SA) activity, a region centrally involved in parental care in animals, to giving targeted support was associated with less right amygdala activity to an emotional faces task (r=-.297, 95% CI=[-.547, -.043]). Study 2 replicated and extended this association to show that self-reports of giving targeted support were associated with less amygdala activity to a different emotional faces task, even when adjusting for other social factors (r=-.105, 95% CI=[-.200, -.011]). Giving untargeted support was not related to amygdala activity in either study.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of beauty retouching to enhance attractiveness of self-depictions in women

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chisa Ota ◽  
Tamami Nakano
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Facial Attractiveness ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Amygdala Activity ◽  
Increased Activity

AbstractBeauty filters, while often employed for retouching photos to appear more attractive on social media, when used in excess cause images to give a distorted impression. The neural mechanisms underlying this change in facial attractiveness according to beauty retouching level remain unknown. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging in women as they viewed photos of their own face or unknown faces that had been retouched at three levels: no, mild, and extreme. The activity in the nucleus accumbens (NA) exhibited a positive correlation with facial attractiveness, whereas amygdala activity showed a negative correlation with attractiveness. Even though the participants rated others’ faces as more attractive than their own, the NA showed increased activity only for their mildly retouched own face and the amygdala exhibited greater activation in the others’ faces condition than the own face condition. Moreover, amygdala activity was greater for extremely retouched faces than for unretouched or mildly retouched faces for both conditions. Frontotemporal and cortical midline areas showed greater activation for one’s own than others’ faces, but such self-related activation was absent when extremely retouched. These results suggest that neural activity dynamically switches between the NA and amygdala according to perceived attractiveness of one’s face.

scholarly journals Amygdala activity in response to dynamic emotional faces: An event-related fMRI study

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yosuke MORIOKA ◽  
Masaki FUKUNAGA ◽  
Chuzo TANAKA ◽  
Masahiro UMEDA ◽  
Asuka NAKAGOSHI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Amygdala Activity

Suburban Networks and Urban Villages: Community and the Built Environment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Dotson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Coarse Graining ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Third Places ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
Suburban Sprawl ◽  
Ray Oldenburg

This chapter interrogates the built environment with respect to its compatibility with thick community. Echoing and extending the analyses of Jane Jacobs and Ray Oldenburg, it is argued that much of the urban environment in technological societies – from suburban sprawl to urban renewal high rises – effectively legislates that citizens live as networked individuals. Not only does the coarse graining of these spaces functionally segregate different facets of everyday life, they ensure that social ties are diffuse and single-threaded. Their lack of appropriate density and walkable amenities limits serendipitous interactions and other activities that support the growth of place-based social connection. Moreover, their poor affordances for “third places” such as pubs and cafes limits the sociability of most neighborhoods. Finally, the governance structures of most areas is either weakly democratic, unable to support constructive ways of working through conflict, or not scaled so as to match the physical boundaries of urban communities.

scholarly journals Amygdala activity and prefrontal cortex-amygdala effective connectivity to emerging emotional faces distinguish remitted and depressed mood states in bipolar disorder

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan B Perlman ◽  
Jorge RC Almeida ◽  
Dina M Kronhaus ◽  
Amelia Versace ◽  
Edmund J LaBarbara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Depressed Mood ◽  
Effective Connectivity ◽  
Mood States ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Amygdala Activity

scholarly journals Attention shifting in the context of emotional faces: Disentangling neural mechanisms of irritability from anxiety

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 645-656
Author(s):  
Maria Kryza‐Lacombe ◽  
Cynthia Kiefer ◽  
Karen T.G. Schwartz ◽  
Katie Strickland ◽  
Jillian Lee Wiggins
Keyword(s):  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Attention Shifting ◽  
Emotional Faces

scholarly journals Watch and Learn: Vicarious Threat Learning across Human Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1345
Author(s):  
Yael Skversky-Blocq ◽  
Jan Haaker ◽  
Tomer Shechner
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Pathway ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
Pathological Anxiety

Vicarious threat learning is an important pathway in learning about safety and danger in the environment and is therefore critical for survival. It involves learning by observing another person’s (the demonstrator) fearful responses to threat and begins as early as infancy. The review discusses the literature on vicarious threat learning and infers how this learning pathway may evolve over human development. We begin by discussing the methods currently being used to study observational threat learning in the laboratory. Next, we focus on the social factors influencing vicarious threat learning; this is followed by a review of vicarious threat learning among children and adolescents. Finally, we examine the neural mechanisms underpinning vicarious threat learning across human development. To conclude, we encourage future research directions that will help elucidate how vicarious threat learning emerges and how it relates to the development of normative fear and pathological anxiety.

scholarly journals Overt and covert attention shifts to emotional faces – combining EEG, Eye-tracking and a Go/No-go paradigm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Kulke ◽  
Lena Brümmer ◽  
Arezoo Pooresmaeili ◽  
Annekathrin Schacht
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Emotional Content ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Covert Attention ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Attention Shifts

In everyday life, faces with emotional expressions quickly attract attention and eye-movements. To study the neural mechanisms of such emotion-driven attention by means of event-related brain potentials (ERPs), tasks that employ covert shifts of attention are commonly used, in which participants need to inhibit natural eye-movements towards stimuli. It remains, however, unclear how shifts of attention to emotional faces with and without eye-movements differ from each other. The current preregistered study aimed to investigate neural differences between covert and overt emotion-driven attention. We combined eye-tracking with measurements of ERPs to compare shifts of attention to faces with happy, angry or neutral expressions when eye-movements were either executed (Go conditions) or withheld (No-go conditions). Happy and angry faces led to larger EPN amplitudes, shorter latencies of the P1 component and faster saccades, suggesting that emotional expressions significantly affected shifts of attention. Several ERPs (N170, EPN, LPC), were augmented in amplitude when attention was shifted with an eye-movement, indicating an enhanced neural processing of faces if eye-movements had to be executed together with a reallocation of attention. However, the modulation of ERPs by facial expressions did not differ between the Go and No-go conditions, suggesting that emotional content enhances both covert and overt shifts of attention. In summary, our results indicate that overt and covert attention shifts differ but are comparably affected by emotional content.

scholarly journals Alone but not lonely: The relationship between COVID-19 social factors, loneliness, depression, and suicidal ideation

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0261867
Author(s):  
Ana Rabasco ◽  
Vincent Corcoran ◽  
Margaret Andover
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Relationship

Objective Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been concerns that social distancing may negatively impact mental health, particularly with regards to loneliness, depressive symptoms, and suicidality. The current study explored how aspects of social distancing, communication, and online support from October 2020 to December 2020 related to loneliness, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation. Method Participants (n = 216) who self-identified as having mental health diagnoses were recruited and completed questionnaires online. Results Findings showed that COVID-19 related social contact, particularly electronic social contact, is associated with decreased loneliness, suicidal ideation, and depression. Online emotional support was significantly associated with decreased loneliness and depressive symptoms. Social distancing practices were not associated with increased loneliness, suicidal ideation, and depression. Conclusions Our findings underscore the importance of leveraging electronic methods of social connection, especially among individuals who are at risk for suicide or depression.

scholarly journals Neural mechanisms of overt attention shifts to emotional faces

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Kulke
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Visual Saliency ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Overt Attention ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Attention Shifts

Emotional faces draw attention and eye-movements towards them. However, the neural mechanisms of attention have mainly been investigated during fixation, which is uncommon in everyday life where people move their eyes to shift attention to faces. Therefore, the current study combined eye-tracking and Electroencephalography (EEG) to measure neural mechanisms of overt attention shifts to faces with happy, neutral and angry expressions, allowing participants to move their eyes freely towards the stimuli. Saccade latencies towards peripheral faces did not differ depending on expression and early neural response (P1) amplitudes and latencies were unaffected. However, the later occurring Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) was significantly larger for emotional than for neutral faces. This response occurs after saccades towards the faces. Therefore, emotion modulations only occurred after an overt shift of gaze towards the stimulus had already been completed. Visual saliency rather than emotional content may therefore drive early saccades, while later top-down processes reflect emotion processing.

scholarly journals Can Virtual Conferences Promote Social Connection?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Warren Dunn ◽  
Iris Lok ◽  
Jiaying Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Social Ties ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Suggestive Evidence ◽  
Virtual Conference

Across disciplines, people attend conferences in part to build connections with new ties and to reinforce connections with existing ties--but conference travel comes at a high cost in terms of time, money, and carbon. The COVID-19 pandemic forced major conferences, including TED’s annual flagship conference, to move online. Thus, TED2020 offered an opportunity to examine whether attending a virtual conference can promote feelings of social connection. Our findings provide the first evidence that actively participating in a virtual conference may be linked to enhanced feelings of social connection, particularly with new ties. Over the course of the conference, TED attendees exhibited rising levels of connection to new ties, whereas feelings of connection to existing ties remained unchanged. These findings provide suggestive evidence that virtual conferences may be more effective in building connections with new social ties than in strengthening connections with existing social ties. Our findings also point to the types of conference activities that may be especially beneficial for promoting the development of new social ties.

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