Social context facilitates visuomotor synchrony and bonding in children and adults

Interpersonal synchrony is a fundamental part of human social interaction, with known effects on facilitating social bonding. Moving in time with another person facilitates prosocial behaviour, however, it is unknown if the degree of synchronisation predicts the degree of social bonding. Similarly, while people readily fall in synchrony even without being instructed to do so, we do not know whether such spontaneous synchronisation elicits similar prosocial effects as instructed synchronisation. Across two studies, we investigated how context (social vs non-social stimulus) and instruction (instructed vs uninstructed) influenced synchronisation accuracy and bonding with the interaction partner in adults and children. The results revealed improved visuomotor synchrony within a social, compared to non-social, context in adults and children. Children, but not adults, synchronised more accurately when instructed to synchronise than when uninstructed. For both children and adults, synchronisation in a social context elicited stronger social bonding towards an interaction partner as compared to synchronisation in a non-social context. Finally, children’s, but not adults’, degree of synchrony with the partner was significantly associated with their feelings of social closeness. These findings illuminate the interaction of sensorimotor coupling and joint action in social contexts and how these mechanisms facilitate synchronisation ability and social bonding.

When Does Status Transfer between People? A Crowdsourced Experiment on the Scope of Status by Association

It is well known in social psychology that people are judged by the company they keep, but when and how does that company affect how individuals are evaluated? This article extends expectation states theory to explain associative status. The theory predicts that the status value of former coworkers will “spill over” to positively predict a person’s status position in a new task with new coworkers. A series of crowdsourced experiments finds that status spreads to a person from a former interaction partner. The status of one’s associates predicts deference behavior only when the previous and current task contexts rely on similar abilities. Meanwhile, explicitly evaluated status and performance expectations respond to the status of associates regardless of how interaction contexts are related. The present findings highlight the importance of role relationships and task contexts as moderators that regulate whether status transfers from one person to another.

Consensual and idiosyncratic trustworthiness perceptions independently influence social decision-making

Trustworthiness perceptions are based on facial features that are seen as trustworthy by most people (e.g., resemblance to a smile) and features that are only seen as trustworthy by a specific perceiver (e.g., resemblance to a loved one). In other words, trustworthiness perceptions reflect consensual and idiosyncratic judgment components. Yet, when examining the influence of facial cues on social decision-making previous studies have almost exclusively focused on consensual judgments, ignoring the potential role of idiosyncratic judgments. Results of two studies, with 491 participants making 15,656 trust decisions, showed that consensual and idiosyncratic trustworthiness judgments independently influenced participants’ likelihood to trust an interaction partner, with no significant differences in the magnitude of the effects. These results highlight the need to consider both consensual and idiosyncratic judgments. Previous work, which only focused on the effect of consensual judgments, may have underestimated the overall influence of trustworthiness perceptions on social decision-making.

Smaller Than Expected

In two pre-registered studies, we investigated whether processes of imitative action regulation are facilitated after experiencing an episode of social exclusion. We reasoned that imitative action regulation effects should be more pronounced for participants who were socially excluded, providing them with an “automatic means” to socially reconnect with others. Participants played a virtual ball-tossing game to experimentally induce social exclusion or inclusion experiences. Subsequently, pairs of two participants engaged in an observational stimulus–response (SR) binding paradigm modeled after Giesen et al. (2014) : Participants observed color categorization responses in their interaction partner (trial n-1) and then executed (in)compatible responses in the subsequent trial (trial n), with observation and responding occurring in alternation. Stimulus relation (repetition vs. change) from trial n-1 to trial n was orthogonally manipulated. In both studies, stimulus-based retrieval effects of observationally acquired SR bindings were descriptively larger in socially excluded (compared with socially included) participants. However, none of the effects were statistically significant. Even a joint analysis of both experiments did not show the expected modulation. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on social exclusion effects on imitative action regulation processes.

Novel germline variant in the histone demethylase and transcription regulator KDM4C induces a multi-cancer phenotype

BackgroundGenes involved in epigenetic regulation are central for chromatin structure and gene expression. Specific mutations in these might promote carcinogenesis in several tissue types.MethodsWe used exome, whole-genome and Sanger sequencing to detect rare variants shared by seven affected individuals in a striking early-onset multi-cancer family. The only variant that segregated with malignancy resided in a histone demethylase KDM4C. Consequently, we went on to study the epigenetic landscape of the mutation carriers with ATAC, ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation) and RNA-sequencing from lymphoblastoid cell lines to identify possible pathogenic effects.ResultsA novel variant in KDM4C, encoding a H3K9me3 histone demethylase and transcription regulator, was found to segregate with malignancy in the family. Based on Roadmap Epigenomics Project data, differentially accessible chromatin regions between the variant carriers and controls enrich to normally H3K9me3-marked chromatin. We could not detect a difference in global H3K9 trimethylation levels. However, carriers of the variant seemed to have more trimethylated H3K9 at transcription start sites. Pathway analyses of ChIP-seq and differential gene expression data suggested that genes regulated through KDM4C interaction partner EZH2 and its interaction partner PLZF are aberrantly expressed in mutation carriers.ConclusionsThe apparent dysregulation of H3K9 trimethylation and KDM4C-associated genes in lymphoblastoid cells supports the hypothesis that the KDM4C variant is causative of the multi-cancer susceptibility in the family. As the variant is ultrarare, located in the conserved catalytic JmjC domain and predicted pathogenic by the majority of available in silico tools, further studies on the role of KDM4C in cancer predisposition are warranted.

Alcohol narrows physical distance between strangers

Pandemic management is likely to represent a global reality for years to come, but the roadmap for how to approach pandemic restrictions is as yet unclear. Of the restrictions enacted during COVID-19, among the more controversial surround alcohol. Like many infectious diseases, the principal mode of transmission for COVID-19 is direct respiration of droplets emitted during close social contact, and health officials warn that alcohol consumption may lead to decreased adherence to physical distancing guidelines. Governing bodies have acted to close bars before restaurants and have also specifically restricted alcohol sales, while at the same time those in the nightlife industry have labeled such actions unfounded and discriminatory. Complicating such debates is the lack of evidence on alcohol’s effects on physical distance. In the current study we employed a randomized alcohol-administration design paired with computer-vision measures, analyzing over 20,000 proximity readings derived from video to examine the effect of alcohol consumption on physical distance during social interaction. Results indicated that alcohol caused individuals to draw significantly closer to an unfamiliar interaction partner during social exchange, reducing physical proximity at a rate with potentially important implications for public health. In contrast, alcohol had no effect on physical distance with a familiar interaction partner. Findings suggest that alcohol might act to overcome a natural caution people feel towards strangers and thus promote virus transmission between previously unconnected social groups.

Characterization of the HCN Interaction Partner TRIP8b/PEX5R in the Intracardiac Nervous System of TRIP8b-Deficient and Wild-Type Mice

The tetratricopeptide repeat-containing Rab8b-interacting protein (TRIP8b/PEX5R) is an interaction partner and auxiliary subunit of hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels, which are key for rhythm generation in the brain and in the heart. Since TRIP8b is expressed in central neurons but not in cardiomyocytes, the TRIP8b-HCN interaction has been studied intensely in the brain, but is deemed irrelevant in the cardiac conduction system. Still, to date, TRIP8b has not been studied in the intrinsic cardiac nervous system (ICNS), a neuronal network located within epicardial fat pads. In vitro electrophysiological studies revealed that TRIP8b-deficient mouse hearts exhibit increased atrial refractory and atrioventricular nodal refractory periods, compared to hearts of wild-type littermates. Meanwhile, heart rate, sino-nodal recovery time, and ventricular refractory period did not differ between genotypes. Trip8b mRNA was detected in the ICNS by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. RNAscope in situ hybridization confirmed Trip8b localization in neuronal somata and nerve fibers. Additionally, we found a very low amount of mRNAs in the sinus node and atrioventricular node, most likely attributable to the delicate fibers innervating the conduction system. In contrast, TRIP8b protein was not detectable. Our data suggest that TRIP8b in the ICNS may play a role in the modulation of atrial electrophysiology beyond HCN-mediated sino-nodal control of the heart.

A Mechanistic insight into chemical cues and interactions involved in herbivory induced jasmonate mediated plant defense mechanism

The first step in plant defense mechanism is to sense the insect attack stimulus. Plant sensitivity of an insect attack is the first step of defense. Molecules generated by the oral secretion of the insect interact with the plant receptors to trigger plant defense mechanisms. We selected some highly cited insect elicitors molecules, volicitin, caeliferin, bruchin which interact with plant defense by interacting with plant elicitors (systemin, inceptin and peps) located on the plant cell surface. This interaction activates plant receptors SYR1, LRR, PEPR and triggers downstream defense signaling. The octadecanoid pathways, involving enzymes allene oxide synthase (AOS) and Hydroxyperoxide lyase (HPL) are activated. These enzymes mediate production of green leafy volatiles and Jasmonic acid by interacting with hydroxperoxide molecules. We docked the elicitors with receptors and enzymes with substrates in the pathway of JA production. Phe was found to be an important amino acid that interacts with 13- hydroxyperoxides in the case of AOS to produce JA but not in the case of HPL. JA is converted to JA-Ile which shows strong binding with COI1 and COI1-JA-Ile complex docked with JAZ which showed strong interaction with five hydrogens and one salt bridge bond. AOS and HPL showed less than 40% identity for sequence and structure alignment. AOS and HPL had shown an interaction between each other and showed a common interaction partner of the Lipoxygenase family. HPL shows interaction with ADH2 (Alcohol dehydrogenase) involved in GLVs production. AOS also showed interaction partner AOC, COI1 and OPR1 which are involved in JA-induced plant defense mechanism.