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Early detection of intentional harm in the human amygdala
Abstract
A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral evaluation engages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. This network relies on the amygdala as a critical hub, likely through frontotemporal connections indexing stimulus salience. We assessed inferences about perceived harm using a paradigm validated through fMRI, eye-tracking and EEG recordings. During the task, we measured local field potentials in three patients with depth electrodes (N=115) placed in the amygdala and in several frontal, temporal, and parietal locations. Direct electrophysiological recordings demonstrate that intentional harm induces early activity in the amygdala (<200ms), which, in turn, predicts intention attribution. The amygdala was the only site that systematically discriminated between critical conditions and predicted their classification of events as intentional. Moreover, connectivity analysis showed that intentional harm induced stronger frontotemporal information sharing at early stages. Results support the 'many roads' view of the amygdala and highlight its role in the rapid encoding of intention and salience –critical components of mentalizing and moral evaluation.
Supplementary resource (1)
... Two of the studies have used this tool exclusively, as is the case of [4,5]. The other studies combine the use of eye tracking with other tools, such as: electroencephalogram [6], electromyography [7], functional magnetic resonance [4,6] and depth sensor imaging technology [9]. These studies have been used at a medical level. ...
... Two of the studies have used this tool exclusively, as is the case of [4,5]. The other studies combine the use of eye tracking with other tools, such as: electroencephalogram [6], electromyography [7], functional magnetic resonance [4,6] and depth sensor imaging technology [9]. These studies have been used at a medical level. ...
... Examples of images used in[10,15,6] studies. ...
Eye Tracking it is a sensor technology that allows - through a device – to exactly know where a person’s gaze is focused. In the field of Neuropsychology, it is important to know studies with this tool to start new research. Therefore, this study explores and synthesizes studies on the diagnosis of aggressive behaviors and emotions by using the Eye tracking technology. This systematic review of the literature was carried out under the PRISMA criteria. The studies included in the review consist of articles from empirical studies, peer-reviewed published between 2010 and 2018. The databases included in the study are: Pubmed, Scopus, PsycInfo, Scielo, DOAJ. We obtained 53 preliminary articles. 16 studies were selected according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the investigation.
... Given that VSTM binding requires effective communication between regions of the brain responsible for integrating stimulus features, we used a new measure of integration and global information sharing across distant cortical regions, called Weighted Symbolic Mutual Information (wSMI) [55], adapted for active tasks assessment [56] (see Figure 2). wSMI assesses the extent to which two signals present non-random joint fluctuations (sharing 21 [55]). ...
... wSMI assesses the extent to which two signals present non-random joint fluctuations (sharing 21 [55]). WSMI involves a symbolic transformation which depends on temporal separation (here, Tau-τ 1=2 ms, 2=4 ms, 3=8 ms, 4=16ms or 5=32 ms) each of which is sensitive to information sharing at specific frequency bands [56]. wSMI was computed as follows [55]. ...
... In the present study we adapted a new measure of integration and global information sharing across distant cortical regions (i.e., wSMI) [55]). This method proved robust to discriminate between patients with different states of consciousness in an earlier study and then was adapted for successfully tracking short-time connectivity during active tasks [56]. Controls. ...
Background:
Alzheimer's disease (AD) as a disconnection syndrome disrupts both brain information sharing and memory binding functions. The extent to which these two phenotypic expressions are shared pathophysiological mechanisms remains unknown.
Objective:
To unveil the electrophysiological correlates of integrative memory impairments in AD towards new memory biomarkers for its prodromal stages.
Methods:
Patients with 100% risk of familial AD (FAD) and healthy controls underwent assessment with the VSTM binding test (VSTMBT) while we recorded their EEG. We applied a novel brain connectivity method (Weighted Symbolic Mutual Information) to EEG data.
Results:
Patients showed significant deficits during the VSTMBT. A reduction of brain connectivity was observed during resting as well as during correct VSTM binding, particularly over frontal and posterior regions. An increase of connectivity was found during VSTM binding performance over central regions. While decreased connectivity was found in cases in more advanced stages of FAD, increased brain connectivity appeared in cases in earlier stages. Such altered patterns of task-related connectivity were found in 89% of the assessed patients.
Conclusions:
VSTM binding in the prodromal stages of FAD are associated to altered patterns of brain connectivity thus confirming the link between integrative memory deficits and impaired brain information sharing in prodromal FAD. While significant loss of brain connectivity seems to be a feature of the advanced stages of FAD increased brain connectivity characterizes its earlier stages. These findings are discussed in the light of recent proposals about the earliest pathophysiological mechanisms of AD and their clinical expression.
... From a service point of view, intentionality may be ascribed to various operational (e.g., cost reduction, productivity, company policies, crisis events) and employee constraints (limited emotional, attentive, and time capacities), which do not allow to perfectly meet customer needs (Varela-Neira et al., 2014). From a (social) psychological perspective, research corroborates its relevance for negative events in social interactions in general (Hesse et al., 2016). Research shows that individuals overestimate intentional harm ('harm magnification effect'), assigning more punishment and moral condemnation to the perpetrator as a consequence of intentionality (Hesse et al., 2016). ...
... From a (social) psychological perspective, research corroborates its relevance for negative events in social interactions in general (Hesse et al., 2016). Research shows that individuals overestimate intentional harm ('harm magnification effect'), assigning more punishment and moral condemnation to the perpetrator as a consequence of intentionality (Hesse et al., 2016). Moreover, research links intentionality as a specific cause of retaliation (Jackson et al., 2019). ...
Intentional failures, which refer to purposeful transgressions by the organisation or its employees against customers, are common across different industries including tourism, yet there is a lack of research on tourists' perceptions and reactions to such failures. Using an experimental approach, we find that compared with unintentional failures, tourists are more sensitive to intentional failures as they lead to significantly higher electronic negative word of mouth (eNWOM) and revenge behaviours. We further show that intentional failures are less harmful when the inferred motive is positive (vs. negative). Drawing on psychological contract theory, we demonstrate the key role of perceived betrayal as the mechanism to explain these effects. The insights, though not legitimising intentional failures, offer managerial guidance particularly when tourism and hospitality firms must bow to external pressures. Specifically, managers in the tourism industry can reduce the negative consequences of intentional failures by highlighting the potential benefits for tourists, thus creating the impression of a positive motive.
... This approach provides a more reliable assessment of individuals' empathetic skills, reducing biases and social desirability effects while offering better predictive and ecological validity than self-report or informant-report methods (78). Moreover, our paradigm has proven to induce fast and automatic empathetic responses to others' pain (79,80) and activated a neural network associated with the direct experience of pain (74,81). ...
... Affective components of empathy are foundational, while cognitive components are more complex and may rely on other abilities (107). Moral reasoning entails a complex integration of both affective and cognitive facets of empathy (80,108,109). The specific questions included: (1) cognitive aspects: (a) intentionality comprehension assesses if the participant correctly understands the action's intention ("Was the action done on purpose?"); ...
Growing up in neglectful households can impact multiple aspects of social cognition. However, research on neglect's effects on social cognition processes and their neuroanatomical correlates during adolescence is scarce. Here, we aimed to comprehensively assess social cognition processes (recognition of basic and contextual emotions, theory of mind, the experience of envy and Schadenfreude and empathy for pain) and their structural brain correlates in adolescents with legal neglect records within family-based care. First, we compared neglected adolescents (n = 27) with control participants (n = 25) on context-sensitive social cognition tasks while controlling for physical and emotional abuse and executive and intellectual functioning. Additionally, we explored the grey matter correlates of these domains through voxel-based morphometry. Compared to controls, neglected adolescents exhibited lower performance in contextual emotional recognition and theory of mind, higher levels of envy and Schadenfreude and diminished empathy. Physical and emotional abuse and executive or intellectual functioning did not explain these effects. Moreover, social cognition scores correlated with brain volumes in regions subserving social cognition and emotional processing. Our results underscore the potential impact of neglect on different aspects of social cognition during adolescence, emphasizing the necessity for preventive and intervention strategies to address these deficits in this population.
... We also have relied on insights from social neuroscience to better understand the dynamics of economic cooperation and betrayal beyond the limits of the classical behavioral economics paradigms[35,39,40]. Finally, we have pursued alternatives to compartmentalized conceptions of cognitive phenomena, moving toward more ecological tasks which better reflect the situated impact of mental disorders[21,35,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Yet, despite our efforts to explore the borderlands of social cognitive neuroscience and other social sciences, we still feel constrained by disciplinary isolation, building models of neurocognitive processes that are still largely confined to the limits of the laboratory. ...
... We also have relied on insights from social neuroscience to better understand the dynamics of economic cooperation and betrayal beyond the limits of classical behavioral economics paradigms [35,39,40]. Finally, we have pursued alternatives to compartmentalized conceptions of cognitive phenomena, moving toward more ecological tasks which better reflect the situated impact of mental disorders [21,35,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Yet, despite our efforts to explore the borderlands of social cognitive neuroscience and other social sciences, we still feel constrained by disciplinary isolation, building models of neurocognitive processes that are still largely confined to the limits of the laboratory. ...
The field of social cognitive affective neuroscience seems to overcome long-term problems undermining old-fashioned cognitive neuroscience, such as its reductionist approach; its exclusion of affect, body, and culture in the comprehension of mental phenomena; and its propensity toward isolationist models over integrative or multilevel theories of neurocognition. Moreover, in this developing field, centuries-old arguments of incommensurability between natural and human sciences can be reframed as little more than pseudoproblems. The apparent paradigm shift inherent in social cognitive neuroscience entails new conceptual, methodological, metatheoretical, and aesthetic questions. Also, it gives rise to novel problems as it taxes the boundaries with other disciplines. Many of these dynamical tensions among related fields of knowledge, which are often left implicit, continue to change across domains and periods. Here we chart such new borderlands and summarize the contributions comprised in the present book. Neuroscience and Social Science: The Missing Link engages empirical researchers and theorists around the world in an attempt to integrate perspectives from many disciplines it addresses, separating real from spurious divides between them and delineating new challenges for future investigation. The volume is organized in four sections. Section A is devoted to neuroscientific research on specific domains of social cognition, ranging from social emotions, negotiation, cooperation, and interpersonal coordination to empathy and morality. Section B focuses on the impact of social neuroscience in specific social spheres, namely, the clinical field, the psychotherapeutic settings, and the mass media. Section C encompasses works on the integration of social and neuroscientific insights to contribute to matters as pressing as poverty, socioeconomic inequality, and health and well-being. Finally, Section D offers philosophical contributions on theoretical, methodological, and even ethical questions arising from this promising interdisciplinary encounter. Through this wide-ranging proposal, the volume promotes novel reflections on a much-needed marriage while opening opportunities for social neuroscience to plunge from the laboratory into the core of social life.
... As part of an ongoing protocol (Chennu et al., 2013;CanalesJohnson et al., 2015;Hesse et al., 2016), we recruited one patient with intractable epilepsy who was offered surgical intervention to alleviate his condition. The subject was an 18-year-old, righthanded male who had completed high school and suffered from drug-resistant epilepsy since the age of six. ...
... Electrodes with epileptic activity were discarded upon visual identification by two professional neurologists (MCG and JA). Moreover, we discarded channels whose values exceeded five times the signal's mean and/or consecutive signal samples exceeding five standard deviations (SD) from the gradient's mean (Chennu et al., 2013;Hesse et al., 2016). A total of 83 contact sites remained after applying these criteria, and all of them were processed. ...
Recent works evince the critical role of visual short-term memory (STM) binding deficits as a clinical and preclinical marker of Alzheimer’s disease. These studies suggest a potential role of posterior brain regions in both the neurocognitive deficits of Alzheimer’s patients and STM binding in general. Thereupon, we surmised that stimulation of the posterior parietal cortex might be a successful approach to tackle working memory deficits in this condition, especially at early stages. To date, no causal evidence exists of the role of the parietal cortex in STM binding. A unique approach to assess this issue is afforded by single-subject direct intracranial electrical stimulation of specific brain regions during a relevant cognitive task. Electrical stimulation has been used both for clinical purposes and to causally probe brain mechanisms. Previous evidence of electrical currents spreading through white matter along well defined functional circuits indicates that visual working memory mechanisms are subserved by a specific widely distributed network. Here, we stimulated the parietal cortex of a subject with intracranial electrodes as he performed the visual STM task. We compared the ensuing results to those from a non-stimulated condition and to the performance of a matched control group. In brief, direct stimulation of the parietal cortex induced a selective improvement in STM. These results, together with previous studies, provide very preliminary but promising ground to examine behavioral changes upon parietal stimulation in AD. We discuss our results regarding (a) the usefulness of the task to target prodromal stages of Alzheimer’s disease, (b) the role of a posterior network in STM binding and in Alzheimer’s disease, and (c) the potential opportunity to improve STM binding through brain stimulation.
... If this p-value is smaller than the critical alpha-level, then it is concluded that the data between the two groups are significantly different. This method offers a straightforward solution for multiple comparison problems and does not depend on multiple comparisons correction or Gaussian assumptions about the probability distribution of the data [32,33]. This approach has been used in recent ERPs reports of our group [33][34][35]. ...
... This method offers a straightforward solution for multiple comparison problems and does not depend on multiple comparisons correction or Gaussian assumptions about the probability distribution of the data [32,33]. This approach has been used in recent ERPs reports of our group [33][34][35]. Permutations were calculated following a component-free approach across the entire array of electrodes for every millisecond. Electrodes with significant results (p < 0.01) were placed into regions of interest (ROIs), and the activity within such regions was averaged out. ...
Deficits in visual short-term memory (VSTM) binding have been proposed as an early and specific marker for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, no studies have explored the neural correlates of this domain in clinical categories involving prodromal stages with different risk levels of conversion to AD. We assessed underlying electrophysiological modulations in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), patients in the MCI stages of familial AD carrying the mutation E280A of the presenilin-1 gene (MCI-FAD), and healthy controls. Moreover, we compared the behavioral performance and neural correlates of both patient groups. Participants completed a change-detection VSTM task assessing recognition of changes between shapes or shape-color bindings, presented in two consecutive arrays (i.e., study and test) while event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Changes always occurred in the test array and consisted of new features replacing studied features (shape-only) or features swapping across items (shape-color binding). Both MCI and MCI-FAD patients performed worse than controls in the shape-color binding condition. Early electrophysiological activity (100–250 ms) was significantly reduced in both clinical groups, particularly over fronto-central and parieto-occipital regions. However, shape-color binding performance and their reduced neural correlates were similar between MCI and MCI-FAD. Our results support the validity of the VSTM binding test and their neural correlates in the early detection of AD and highlight the importance of studies comparing samples at different risk for AD conversion. The combined analysis of behavioral and ERP data gleaned with the VSTM binding task can offer a valuable memory biomarker for AD.
... Human lesion, neuroimaging, and intracranial electroencephalography studies have implicated the amygdala, the nucleus accumbens (NAc), and most prominently the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as key structures in the neural network of moral decision-making (18,19,(23)(24)(25)(26). The guiding research model in human neuroscience is based upon seminal data from subjects with vmPFC lesions showing abnormally increased utilitarian moral judgments (25,27,28). ...
Most of us would regard killing another person as morally wrong, but when the death of one saves multiple others, it can be morally permitted. According to a prominent computational dual-systems framework, in these life-and-death dilemmas, deontological (nonsacrificial) moral judgments stem from a model-free algorithm that emphasizes the intrinsic value of the sacrificial action, while utilitarian (sacrificial) moral judgments are derived from a model-based algorithm that emphasizes the outcome of the sacrificial action. Rodent decision-making research suggests that the model-based algorithm depends on the basolateral amygdala (BLA), but these findings have not yet been translated to human moral decision-making. Here, in five humans with selective, bilateral BLA damage, we show a breakdown of utilitarian sacrificial moral judgments, pointing at deficient model-based moral decision-making. Across an established set of moral dilemmas, healthy controls frequently sacrifice one person to save numerous others, but BLA-damaged humans withhold such sacrificial judgments even at the cost of thousands of lives. Our translational research confirms a neurocomputational hypothesis drawn from rodent decision-making research by indicating that the model-based algorithm which underlies outcome-based, utilitarian moral judgements in humans critically depends on the BLA.
... La amígdala es la parte del cerebro encargada de registrar y, por ende, reaccionar al miedo. En la actualidad, y más aún en la vida urbana, la amígdala resulta útil, por ejemplo, en el reconocimiento de rostros, expresiones y acciones de otras personas, sobre todo las referidas a la agresividad (Hesse et al., 2015). ...
En este trabajo se analizan diferentes perspectivas teóricas sobre las emociones y sus implicancias para la comunicación política, las campañas y las decisiones electorales. Se reflexiona sobre el uso de las emociones tanto positivas como negativas en las piezas audiovisuales de comunicación electoral, y acerca de los diferentes elementos a los cuales se apela, a partir de estas, para incidir en el comportamiento electoral de los votantes.
... Our work seeks to offer new insights on the neural bases of inter-individual behavioral variability in these domains. Of note, as shown in previous studies with similar [29][30][31] or even smaller [16,[32][33][34][35][36] sample sizes, iEEG can reveal subject-level links between neurocognitive mechanisms [36][37][38][39] and performance with unmatched spatiotemporal resolution. ...
The individual differences approach focuses on the variation of behavioral and neural signatures across subjects. In this context, we searched for intracranial neural markers of performance in three individuals with distinct behavioral patterns (efficient, borderline, and inefficient) in a dual-valence task assessing facial and lexical emotion recognition. First, we performed a preliminary study to replicate well-established evoked responses in relevant brain regions. Then, we examined time series data and network connectivity, combined with multivariate pattern analyses and machine learning, to explore electrophysiological differences in resting-state vs. task-related activity across subjects. Next, using the same methodological approach, we assessed the neural decoding of performance for different dimensions of the task. Classification of time series data mirrored the behavioral gradient across subjects for stimulus type but not for valence. However, network-based measures reflected the subjects’ hierarchical profiles for both stimulus types and valence. Therefore, this measure serves as a sensitive marker for capturing distributed processes such as emotional valence discrimination, which relies on an extended set of regions. Network measures combined with classification methods may offer useful insights to study single subjects and understand inter-individual performance variability. Promisingly, this approach could eventually be extrapolated to other neuroscientific techniques.
... Contextual blending imparments of face and emotional body language are related to temporal and frontal degenera- tion ( Kumfor et al. 2018). In addition, neuroimaging research on behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) ( Baez et al. 2015c) and direct electrophysiologi- cal recordings ( Hesse et al. 2015) have shown that cortico-limbic networks play a critical role in the appraisal of contextual cues, such as those needed to detect aggressive behavior in other people. By the same token, socio-emotional deficits have been reported in semantic dementia, a condition with temporal lobe compro- mise. ...
Social meaning and interaction are shaped by situational elements (real or imagined, explicit or implicit). In this chapter, we introduce the Social Context Network Model (SCNM), which aims to capture the neuroanatomical underpinnings of contextual determinants of social cognition. In the SCNM, prefrontal areas are involved in the generation of focused predictions by updating associations among events (targets) in a specific context. Target-context associations and their experiential learning are indexed by temporal regions. Finally, insular networks support the convergence of emotional and cognitive states related to the coordination between external and internal milieus (or interoception). In brief, we propose that fronto-insulo-temporal networks are critical for the integration of interoceptive states and emotions with social information in order to predict and ascribe social meanings. This framework is then extended to dimensional and transnosological approaches to neuropsychiatry. We highlight how the SCNM can provide clinical and theoretical shortcuts for frontotemporal dementia, autism spectrum disorders, and other neuropsychiatric conditions, supporting a basic contextual impairment underlying social cognition deficits. We present new SCNM paradigms, testable dimensional and transdiagnostic hypotheses, and potential interventions for neuropsychiatric conditions. Finally, we propose a situated approach to formulate tasks that closely resemble everyday cognition while observing key methodological constraints.
... In addition, and in line with previous neurodevelopmental (Cowell & Decety, 2015a, 2015b) and adult electrophysiological studies (Decety & Cacioppo, 2012;Hesse et al., 2016), children exhibited rapid differentiation of prosocial and antisocial actions, irrespective of group membership, as indicated by the valence effect observed in the central P2 component. Electrophysiological responses occurring at this early stage (~150 ms) such as the P2 are thought to reflect facilitated perception of motivationally relevant stimuli (Carretié et al., 2001;Carretié et al., 2004). ...
Survival is dependent on sociality within groups which ensure sustenance and protection. From an early age, children show a natural tendency to sort people into groups and discriminate among them. The computations guiding evaluation of third‐party behaviors are complex, requiring integration of intent, consequences, and knowledge of group affiliation. This study examined how perceiving third‐party morally laden behavior influences children's likelihood to exhibit or reduce group bias. Following a minimal group paradigm assignment, young children (4–7 years) performed a moral evaluation task where group affiliations and moral actions were systematically juxtaposed, so that they were exposed to disproportionately antisocial in‐group and prosocial out‐group scenarios. Electroencephalography was recorded, and group preference was assessed with a resource allocation game before and after the EEG session. Across all children, evaluations of others' moral actions arose from early and automatic processing (~150 ms), followed by later interactive processing of affiliation and moral valence (~500 ms). Importantly, individual differences in bias manifestation and attitude change were predicted by children's neural responses. Children with high baseline bias selectively exhibited a rapid detection (~200 ms) of scenarios inconsistent with their bias (in‐group harm and out‐group help). Changes in bias corresponded to distinct patterns in longer latency neural processing. These new developmental neuroscience findings elucidate the multifaceted processing involved in moral evaluation of others' actions, their group affiliations, the nature of the integration of both into full judgments, and the relation of individual differences in neural responses to social decision‐making in childhood.
... Interestingly, emotionally-neutral stimuli seem to require selective attention for processing, while emotionally-laden stimuli may be less dependent on attentional resources ( Vuilleumier, 2005;Vuilleumier et al., 2001) and more rooted in amygdala responsivity ( Diano et al., 2017). Magnetoencephalography (MEG) has excellent temporal specificity, and previous MEG studies using healthy participants have found early amygdala activation in response to emotional faces ( Garrido, Barnes, Sahani, & Dolan, 2012;Garvert, Friston, Dolan, & Garrido, 2014;Luo, Holroyd, Jones, Hendler, & Blair, 2007;Luo et al., 2010), consistent with face processing studies that used intracranial recordings ( Hesse et al., 2016;Méndez-Bértolo et al., 2016;Pourtois, Spinelli, Seeck, & Vuilleumier, 2010;Sato et al., 2011). Substantial evidence supports the capability of MEG to detect neural activity in deep brain structures ( Badura-Brack et al., 2017;Cornwell, Arkin, Overstreet, Carver, & Grillon, 2012;Cornwell, Salvadore et al., 2012;Cornwell, Overstreet, & Grillon, 2014;Dalal et al., 2008;McDermott et al., 2016;Proskovec, Heinrichs-Graham, & Wilson, 2016;Pu, Cornwell, Cheyne, & Johnson, 2017;Salvadore et al., 2009;Salvadore et al., 2010;Wilson et al., 2009;Wilson et al., 2010;Wilson et al., 2011;Wilson et al., 2017). ...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a major psychiatric disorder that is prevalent in combat veterans. Previous neuroimaging studies have found elevated amygdala activity in PTSD in response to threatening stimuli, but previous work has lacked the temporal specificity to study fast bottom-up fear responses involving the amygdala. Forty-four combat veterans, 28 with PTSD and 16 without, completed psychological testing and then a face-processing task during magnetoencephalography (MEG). The resulting MEG data were pre-processed, transformed into the time-frequency domain, and then imaged using a beamforming approach. We found that veterans with PTSD exhibited significantly stronger oscillatory activity from 50-450 ms in the left amygdala compared to veterans without PTSD while processing threatening faces. This group difference was not present while viewing neutral faces. The current study shows that amygdala hyperactivity in response to threatening cues begins quickly in PTSD, which makes theoretical sense as an adaptive bottom-up fear response.
... The amygdala is involved in moral learning and responses to threats [37][38][39]. Indeed, perceiving an individual who intentionally hurts another person triggers an early amygdalar boost, which plays a critical role in evaluating actual or potential , the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortices, the dorsolateral and ventrome- dial PFCs, the anterior temporal lobes, and the superior temporal sulcus. ...
Moral cognition, a central aspect of human social functioning, involves complex interactions between emotion and reasoning to tell right from wrong. In this chapter, we summarize the cognitive neuroscience literature on moral cognition and moral emotions, highlighting their close relationship with other social cognition domains. We consider neuroimaging research and behavioral/neuropsychological evidence of moral impairments in patients with psychiatric and neurological conditions. We also describe cognitive neuroscience models claiming that moral cognition processes are shaped by the encompassing social context. These views emphasize how cultural and context-dependent knowledge, as well as motivational states, can be integrated to explain complex aspects of human moral cognition. Finally, we address real-life social scenarios on which available studies could make a direct impact. More generally, we analyze the extent to which moral cognition research can help to understand human social behavior and complex social-moral circumstances.
... Con respecto a las redes neurales, trabajos con neuroimágenes y electrofisiología han encontrado que la actividad del STSp y unión temporoparietal (UTP) está asociada con la asignación automática de intenciones (Figura 3) (Frith & Frith, 2012). Por ejemplo, Decety y Cacioppo (2012) observaron una actividad temprana (170 ms) del STSp y la UTP en situaciones de daño intencional, además, se ha reportado una actividad eléctrica temprana (200) en amígdala en condiciones de daño intencional (Hesse et al., 2016). Algunas variaciones en la asignación de intenciones podrían estar relacionadas con polimorfismos del gen del transportador de serotonina (Marsh y colaboradores, 2011a) y receptor de oxitocina (Kumsta & Heinrichs, 2013;Walter et al., 2012), lo cual se ha asociado con fallas en el pensamiento moral en personas con rasgos de psicopatía (Marsh et al., 2011b). ...
The aim of this cross-sectional study was to identify differences in memory processes and the role of executive functions in memory, in people with migraine and in a control group. Neuropsychological evaluation was made in one session on 63 participants distributed into interictal migraine-with-aura (n = 24), interictal migraine-without-aura (n = 16) and control (n = 23) groups. ANOVAs on the individual tasks revealed statistically significant differences between groups on Rey-Osterrieth direct and percentile copy strategy and recall (both p < 0.001). Differences were identified between control and migraine groups in performance on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure, but not on other memory tasks, suggesting the existence of brain dysfunctions in people with migraine affecting organizational and planning abilities that are necessary for visual memory.
... Con respecto a las redes neurales, trabajos con neuroimágenes y electrofisiología han encontrado que la actividad del STSp y unión temporoparietal (UTP) está asociada con la asignación automática de intenciones (Figura 3) (Frith & Frith, 2012). Por ejemplo, Decety y Cacioppo (2012) observaron una actividad temprana (170 ms) del STSp y la UTP en situaciones de daño intencional, además, se ha reportado una actividad eléctrica temprana (200) en amígdala en condiciones de daño intencional (Hesse et al., 2016). Algunas variaciones en la asignación de intenciones podrían estar relacionadas con polimorfismos del gen del transportador de serotonina (Marsh y colaboradores, 2011a) y receptor de oxitocina (Kumsta & Heinrichs, 2013;Walter et al., 2012), lo cual se ha asociado con fallas en el pensamiento moral en personas con rasgos de psicopatía (Marsh et al., 2011b). ...
En las últimas décadas ha crecido el estudio los mecanismos involucrados en el comportamiento social, gran parte de estas indagaciones se han realizado desde una aproximación de la neurociencia social cognitiva, la cual se basa en un modelo representacional del procesamiento de información. No obstante, esta aproximación ha sido ampliamente criticada por desconocer la participación del cuerpo, la dinámica afectiva, el contexto social, el cambio durante el desarrollo y suponer un procesamiento modular endógeno. En este sentido, este artículo presenta un modelo neurodinámico de la cognición social, comprendiéndola desde una aproximación enactiva, situada, relacional y sistémica. Desde este modelo se describen los principales cambios en esperados la actividad cerebral durante las interacciones sociales en tiempo real y durante la ontogenia. Se concluye resaltando los desafíos y oportunidades que este tipo de aproximaciones puede proporcionar a la neurociencia y psicología social del futuro. Palabras Clave: Cognición social, cognición enactiva, desarrollo social, neurociencia social, neurodinámica. Abstract In recent decades it has seen a growing interest to study the mechanisms involved in social behavior, much of these inquiries fall within social cognitive neuroscience approach, which is based on a representational model of information processing. However, this approach has been widely criticized for ignoring the body participation, emotional dynamics, social context, developmental changes and assuming an endogenous modular processing. In this regard, this article presents a neurodynamic model of social cognition, which understand social process from an enactive, embodied, situated, relational and systemic perspective. This model let us described
... In keeping with these theories, our current findings emphasize the active role of the frontal node of the AON in the predictive coding of others' actions. Our findings fit with recent evidence supporting predictive coding in frontal regions when processing action language (García and Ibáñez 2016), action intentionality (Koster-Hale and Saxe 2013;Hesse et al. 2016), and others' decisions (Koster-Hale and Saxe 2013;Ibañez et al. 2016;Melloni et al. 2016). Importantly, our experimental design allowed us to demonstrate that changes in the excitability of a specific region within the AON bring about impairment or enhancement of the ability to predict the outcomes of human actions, depending on the polarity of stimulation. ...
Influential theories suggest that humans predict others' upcoming actions by using their own motor system as an internal forward model. However, evidence that the motor system is causally essential for predicting others' actions is meager. Using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), we tested the role of the inferior frontal cortex (IFC), in action prediction (AP). We devised a novel AP task where participants observed the initial phases of right-hand reaching-to-grasp actions and had to predict their outcome (i.e., the goal/object to be grasped). We found that suppression by cathodal (inhibitory) tDCS of the left IFC, but not the left superior temporal sulcus or the right IFC, selectively impaired performance on the AP task, but not on a difficulty-matched control task. Remarkably, anodal (excitatory) tDCS of the left IFC brought about a selective improvement in the AP task. These findings indicate that the left IFC is necessary for predicting the outcomes of observed human right-hand actions. Crucially, our study shows for the first time that down- and up-regulating excitability within the motor system can hinder and enhance AP abilities, respectively. These findings support predictive coding theories of action perception and have implications for enhancement of AP abilities.
... Several cognitive and affective functions are involved in this process, which engages the insula, the somatosensory cortex, the periaqueductal gray, and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Jackson, Rainville, & Decety, 2006; Melloni, Lopez, & Ibanez, 2013). The amygdala and related frontotemporal networks are critical for the detection of intentional harm in empathyfor-pain paradigms (Hesse et al., 2016). Empathy is one of the most widely compromised social cognition domains across a range of neurodegenerative (Rankin et al., 2006), cerebrovascular (Leigh et al., 2013 ), psychiatric (Derntl, Seidel, Schneider, & Habel, 2012), and neurodevelopmental () conditions (Table 2). ...
ABSTRACTMultiple disorders once jointly conceived as ?nervous diseases? became segregated by the distinct institutional traditions forged in neurology and psychiatry. As a result, each field specialized in the study and treatment of a subset of such conditions. Here we propose new avenues for interdisciplinary interaction through a triangulation of both fields with social neuroscience. To this end, we review evidence from five relevant domains (facial emotion recognition, empathy, theory of mind, moral cognition, and social context assessment), highlighting their common disturbances across neurological and psychiatric conditions and discussing their multiple pathophysiological mechanisms. Our proposal is anchored in multidimensional evidence, including behavioral, neurocognitive, and genetic findings. From a clinical perspective, this work paves the way for dimensional and transdiagnostic approaches, new pharmacological treatments, and educational innovations rooted in a combined neuropsychiatric train
... Some of these regions overlap with the salience network anchored by orbital fronto-insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex associated with orienting attention toward and facilitating the processing of personal and motivational salient social information [Harsay et al., 2012]. Recently, visual scenarios depicting intentional versus accidental harm to people versus objects has been used to examine the neural underpinnings of morality Hesse et al., 2016;Yoder and Decety, 2014a;Yoder and Decety, 2014b]. Intentionality is the decisive cue in determining whether an action was malicious or not [Cushman, 2008;Killen et al., 2011]. ...
Morality is defined as prescriptive norms regarding how people should treat one another, and includes concepts of fairness, justice, and rights. One recent study with moral dilemmas suggested that testosterone administration increases utilitarian judgments, which depends on second-to-fourth (2D: 4D) digit ratio, as a proxy of prenatal priming. However, the neural mechanism by which acute testosterone modulates moral reasoning remains to be determined. Using a placebo-controlled within-subject design, the current study examined the neuromodulatory effect of testosterone in young females by combining moral dilemmas, 2D: 4D, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and subjective ratings of morally laden scenarios. Results showed that testosterone administration elicited more utilitarian responses to evitable dilemmas. The high 2D: 4D group scored more punishments for moral evaluation, whereas the low 2D: 4D group did the opposite. The activity in the amygdala, anterior insular cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) was increased when participants evaluated morally unorthodox actions (intentional harm). The activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction (pSTS/TPJ) to accidental harm was decreased, specific to the high 2D: 4D group. The functional connectivity between the amygdala and dlPFC was reduced. The activity in the pSTS/TPJ to perceived agency predicted utilitarian responses to evitable dilemmas. The findings demonstrate the acute effect of testosterone on neural responses associated with moral judgment, and provide evidence to support that prenatal sex-hormones priming could be important for early neurodevelopment, which plays a crucial role in the neural and behavioral manifestations of testosterone on adult moral reasoning. Hum Brain Mapp, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Intentional service failures (e.g., overbooking or overcharging) have received little scholarly attention, despite their regular occurrence and immense costs. Using a multi-method approach combining experimental and field data from online reviews, it was found that intentional (vs. unintentional) failures lead to greater negative word of mouth (nWOM) and patronage reduction. This research extends these findings by demonstrating that intentional failures are less harmful when the failure is reversible (vs. irreversible) and occurs at an employee (vs. firm) level. Further, while either psychological (e.g., apology) or monetary compensation is effective in mitigating the consequences of intentional failures at an employee level, a combined service recovery (psychological and monetary) is the best solution when the failure is at a firm level. Drawing on attribution theory, the article unveils the key role of trust (as opposed to justice) as the mechanism to explain the effects of intentionality on customers’ nWOM and patronage reduction.
In comparison with other regions, dementia prevalence in Latin America is growing rapidly, along with the consequent clinical, social, and economic burden upon patients and their families. The combination of fragile health care systems, large social inequalities, and isolated clinical and research initiatives makes the coordination of efforts imperative. The Latin America and the Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD) is a regional organization overseeing and promoting clinical and research activities on dementia. Here, we first provide an overview of the consortium, highlighting the antecedents and current mission. Then, we present the consortium’s regional research, including the multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat), which aims to identify the unique genetic, social, and economic factors that drive Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia presentation in LAC relative to the US. We describe an extension of ReDLat which aims to develop affordable markers of disease subtype and severity using high density EEG. We introduce current initiatives promoting regional diagnosis, visibility, and capacity, including the forthcoming launch of the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat). We discuss LAC-CD-led advances in brain health diplomacy, including an assessment of responses to the impact of COVID-19 on people with dementia and examining the knowledge of public policies among experts in the region. Finally, we present the current knowledge-to-action framework, which paves the way for a future regional action plan. Coordinated actions are crucial to forging strong regional bonds, supporting the implementation of regional dementia plans, improving health systems, and expanding research collaborations across Latin America.
This chapter comprehensively examines how integrating developmental and social neuroscience adds value to theories of morality, with an emphasis on the perception and evaluation of interpersonal harm. Empirical studies, using functional neuroimaging, eye‐tracking, behavioral, and environmental measures, in conjunction with lesion studies, show that primary processes interact with higher level affective, motivational, and cognitive mechanisms to build moral cognition. Furthermore, recent neurodevelopmental work suggests that the seemingly fundamental nature of moral cognition, including its motivational and hedonic value, lies in domain‐general computational processes such as attention, approach‐avoidance, social valuation, and decision‐making rather than in domain‐specific, separate, dedicated neural circuitries. A developmental perspective that combines evidence from psychology and neuroscience provides a more complete account of morality, bridging the gap between cognition and behaviors and their underlying affective, motivational, and cognitive mechanisms.
The study of moral emotions (i.e., Schadenfreude and envy) is critical to understand the ecological complexity of everyday interactions between cognitive, affective, and social cognition processes. Most previous studies in this area have used correlational imaging techniques and framed Schadenfreude and envy as unified and monolithic emotional domains. Here, we profit from a relevant neurodegeneration model to disentangle the brain regions engaged in three dimensions of Schadenfreude and envy: deservingness, morality, and legality. We tested a group of patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), as a contrastive neurodegeneration model, and healthy controls on a novel task highlighting each of these dimensions in scenarios eliciting Schadenfreude and envy. Compared with the AD and control groups, bvFTD patients obtained significantly higher scores on all dimensions for both emotions. Correlational analyses revealed an association between envy and Schadenfreude scores and greater deficits in social cognition, inhibitory control, and behavior disturbances in bvFTD patients. Brain anatomy findings (restricted to bvFTD and controls) confirmed the partially dissociable nature of the moral emotions' experiences and highlighted the importance of socio-moral brain areas in processing those emotions. In all subjects, an association emerged between Schadenfreude and the ventral striatum, and between envy and the anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, the results supported an association between scores for moral and legal transgression and the morphology of areas implicated in emotional appraisal, including the amygdala and the parahippocampus. By contrast, bvFTD patients exhibited a negative association between increased Schadenfreude and envy across dimensions and critical regions supporting social-value rewards and social-moral processes (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, angular gyrus and precuneus). Together, this study provides lesion-based evidence for the multidimensional nature of the emotional experiences of envy and Schadenfreude. Our results offer new insights into the mechanisms subsuming complex emotions and moral cognition in neurodegeneration. Moreover, this study presents the exacerbation of envy and Schadenfreude as a new potential hallmark of bvFTD that could impact in diagnosis and progression.
Mature moral judgments rely on the consideration of a perpetrator’s mental state as well as harmfulness of the outcomes produced. Prior work has focused primarily on the functional correlates of how intent information is neurally represented for moral judgments, but few studies have investigated whether individual differences in neuroanatomy can also explain variation in moral judgments. In the current study, we conducted voxel-based morphometry analyses to address this question. We found that local grey matter volume in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus, a region in the functionally defined theory of mind or mentalizing network, was associated with the degree to which participants relied on information about innocent intentions to forgive accidental harms. Our findings provide further support for the key role of mentalizing in the forgiveness of accidental harms and contribute preliminary evidence for the neuroanatomical basis of individual differences in moral judgments.
Background:
Moral judgment has been proposed to rely on a distributed brain network. This function is impaired in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a condition involving damage to some regions of this network. However, no studies have investigated moral judgment in bvFTD via structural neuroimaging.
Methods:
We compared the performance of 21 bvFTD patients and 19 controls on a moral judgment task involving scenarios that discriminate between the contributions of intentions and outcomes. Voxel-based morphometry was used to assess (a) the atrophy pattern in bvFTD patients, (b) associations between gray matter (GM) volume and moral judgments, and (c) structural differences between bvFTD subgroups (patients with relatively preserved moral judgment and patients with severer moral judgment impairments).
Results:
Patients judged attempted harm as more permissible and accidental harm as less permissible than controls. The groups' performance on accidental harm was associated with GM volume in the precuneus. In controls, it was al- so associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Also, both groups' performance on attempted harm was associated with GM volume in the temporoparietal junction. Patients exhibiting worse performance displayed smaller GM volumes in the precuneus and temporal pole.
Conclusions:
Results suggest that moral judgment abnormalities in bvFTD are associated with impaired integration of intentions and outcomes, which depends on an extended brain network. In bvFTD, moral judgment seems to critically depend on areas beyond the VMPFC.
The presence of elevated callous unemotional (CU) traits seems to designate a distinct group of children and adolescents with serious conduct problems. However, the extent to which CU traits impact the aversive reaction to harm is still a contentious issue. Here, we examined the effective connectivity seeded in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex in a large number of children (N = 123, age 9–11, 60 females) with various levels of conduct disorder (CD) symptoms in response to visual stimuli depicting other people being physically injured. Perceiving others being harmed was associated with increased hemodynamic activity in the left amygdala and right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). Children with higher callous traits showed less functional connectivity seeded in anterior cingulate with left amygdala and anterior insula. Conversely, CD symptoms were positively related to connectivity of insula with rTPJ. Overall, these results suggest that callousness is marked by the disruption of widespread cortical networks responsible for detecting and appropriately responding to important environmental cues, such as the distress of others.
Significance
Research in the past decade indicates that the building blocks of morality are present very early in development. However, little is known about the neural and environmental mechanisms underlying their emergence. Here we show, for the first time, to our knowledge, using multiple levels of analysis, the complex integration of bottom–up and top–down processes in sociomoral evaluation. Brain wave differences elicited by witnessing the prosocial and antisocial behaviors of others predicted infants and toddlers’ subsequent attraction to prosocial others and were associated with parental values of justice and fairness. This developmental social neuroscience perspective provides empirical and theoretical clarity to the biological basis and brain–behavior processes involved in moral sensitivity.
Imaging the amygdala with functional MRI is confounded by multiple averse factors, notably signal dropouts due to magnetic inhomogeneity and low signal-to-noise ratio, making it difficult to obtain consistent activation patterns in this region. However, even when consistent signal changes are identified, they are likely to be due to nearby vessels, most notably the basal vein of rosenthal (BVR). Using an accelerated fMRI sequence with a high temporal resolution (TR = 333 ms) combined with susceptibility-weighted imaging, we show how signal changes in the amygdala region can be related to a venous origin. This finding is confirmed here in both a conventional fMRI dataset (TR = 2000 ms) as well as in information of meta-analyses, implying that "amygdala activations" reported in typical fMRI studies are likely confounded by signals originating in the BVR rather than in the amygdala itself, thus raising concerns about many conclusions on the functioning of the amygdala that rely on fMRI evidence alone.
Interoception, the perception of our body internal signals, plays a key role in maintaining homeostasis and guiding our behavior.
Sometimes, we become aware of our body signals and use them in planning and strategic thinking. Here, we show behavioral and
neural dissociations between learning to follow one's own heartbeat and metacognitive awareness of one's performance, in a
heartbeat-tapping task performed before and after auditory feedback. The electroencephalography amplitude of the heartbeat-evoked
potential in interoceptive learners, that is, participants whose accuracy of tapping to their heartbeat improved after auditory
feedback, was higher compared with non-learners. However, an increase in gamma phase synchrony (30–45 Hz) after the heartbeat
auditory feedback was present only in those participants showing agreement between objective interoceptive performance and
metacognitive awareness. Source localization in a group of participants and direct cortical recordings in a single patient
identified a network hub for interoceptive learning in the insular cortex. In summary, interoceptive learning may be mediated
by the right insular response to the heartbeat, whereas metacognitive awareness of learning may be mediated by widespread
cortical synchronization patterns.
Significance
This paper examines how detecting harmful intent creates downstream consequences for assessing damage, magnifying its cost. If intentional harms seem worse, society may spend more money on them than on objectively more damaging unintentional harms or on naturally occurring harms. Why might this occur? Various psychological theories identify the cause as motivation; however, the presence of this motivation has been inferred indirectly. Drawing on animal-model research, we present more direct evidence for blame motivation, and discuss how it may help to explain the magnification of intentional harms. This approach acknowledges the nonrational biases in damage estimates and potential policy priorities.
A large body of evidence supports the view that psychopathy is associated with anomalous emotional processing, reduced guilt and empathy, which are important risk factors for criminal behaviors. However, the precise nature and specificity of this atypical emotional processing is not well understood, including its relation to moral judgment. To further our understanding of the pattern of neural response to perceiving and evaluating morally-laden behavior, this study included 155 criminal male offenders with various level of psychopathy, as assessed with the Psychopathy Check List-Revised. Participants were scanned while viewing short clips depicting interactions between two individuals resulting in either interpersonal harm or interpersonal assistance. After viewing each clip, they were asked to identify the emotions of the protagonists. Inmates with high levels of psychopathy were more accurate than controls in successfully identifying the emotion of the recipient of both helpful and harmful actions. Significant hemodynamic differences were detected in the posterior superior temporal sulcus, amygdala, insula, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex when individuals with high psychopathy viewed negative versus positive scenarios moral scenarios and when they evaluated the emotional responses of the protagonists. These findings suggest that socioemotional processing abnormalities in psychopathy may be somewhat more complicated than merely a general or specific emotional deficit. Rather, situation-specific evaluations of the mental states of others, in conjunction with sensitivity to the nature of the other (victim vs. perpetrator), modulate attention to emotion-related cues. Such atypical processing likely impacts moral decision-making and behavior in psychopaths. Hum Brain Mapp, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Highlights d Temporal dynamics of morality in 3–5 year olds are examined with EEG and eye tracking d Distinct early and later controlled waveforms in viewing helping and harming scenes d Later (LPP), but not early (EPN), waveforms predicted actual generosity d These results shed important light on theories of moral development Authors In Brief Prosocial behavior emerges early in development, and young children possess capacities for social and moral evaluations. In this study, Cowell and Decety explored their neural underpinnings in 3–5 year olds and how these predict actual generosity, exemplifying the potential of integrating development and neuroscience in refining moral theories.
MultiCS conditioning is an affective associative learning paradigm, in which affective categories consist of many similar and complex stimuli. Comparing visual processing before and after learning, recent MultiCS conditioning studies using time-sensitive magnetoencephalography (MEG) revealed enhanced activation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions towards emotionally paired versus neutral stimuli already during short-latency processing stages (i.e., 50 to 80 ms after stimulus onset). The present study aimed at showing that this rapid differential activation develops as a function of the acquisition and not the extinction of the emotional meaning associated with affectively paired stimuli. MEG data of a MultiCS conditioning study were analyzed with respect to rapid changes in PFC activation towards aversively (electric shock) paired and unpaired faces that occurred during the learning of stimulus-reinforcer contingencies. Analyses revealed an increased PFC activation towards paired stimuli during 50 to 80 ms already during the acquisition of contingencies, which emerged after a single pairing with the electric shock. Corresponding changes in stimulus valence could be observed in ratings of hedonic valence, although participants did not seem to be aware of contingencies. These results suggest rapid formation and access of emotional stimulus meaning in the PFC as well as a great capacity for adaptive and highly resolving learning in the brain under challenging circumstances.
Morality and empathy are fundamental components of human nature across cultures. However, the wealth of empirical findings from developmental, behavioral, and social neuroscience demonstrates a complex relation between morality and empathy. At times, empathy guides moral judgment, yet other times empathy can interfere with it. To better understand such relations, we propose abandoning the catchall term of empathy in favor of more precise concepts, such as emotional sharing, empathic concern, and affective perspective-taking.
Humans are biased toward social interaction. Behaviorally, this bias is evident in the rapid effects that self-relevant communicative
signals have on attention and perceptual systems. The processing of communicative cues recruits a wide network of brain regions,
including mentalizing systems. Relatively less work, however, has examined the timing of the processing of self-relevant communicative
cues. In the present study, we used multivariate pattern analysis (decoding) approach to the analysis of magnetoencephalography
(MEG) to study the processing dynamics of social-communicative actions. Twenty-four participants viewed images of a woman
performing actions that varied on a continuum of communicative factors including self-relevance (to the participant) and emotional
valence, while their brain activity was recorded using MEG. Controlling for low-level visual factors, we found early discrimination
of emotional valence (70 ms) and self-relevant communicative signals (100 ms). These data offer neural support for the robust
and rapid effects of self-relevant communicative cues on behavior.
The present study examined neural responses associated with moral sensitivity in adolescents with a background of early social deprivation. Using high-density electroencephalography (hdEEG), brain activity was measured during an intentional inference task, which assesses rapid moral decision-making regarding intentional or unintentional harm to people and objects. We compared the responses to this task in a socially deprived group (DG) with that of a control group (CG). The event-related potentials (ERPs) results showed atypical early and late frontal cortical markers associated with attribution of intentionality during moral decision-making in DG (especially regarding intentional harm to people). The source space of the hdEEG showed reduced activity for DG compared with CG in the right prefrontal cortex, bilaterally in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and right insula. Moreover, the reduced response in vmPFC for DG was predicted by higher rates of externalizing problems. These findings demonstrate the importance of the social environment in early moral development, supporting a prefrontal maturation model of social deprivation.
The affective personality trait ‘harm avoidance’ (HA) from Cloninger’s psychobiological personality model determines how an individual deals with emotional stimuli. Emotional stimuli are processed by a neural network that include the left and right amygdalae as important key nodes. Explicit, implicit and passive processing of affective stimuli are known to activate the amygdalae differently reflecting differences in attention, level of detailed analysis of the stimuli and the cognitive control needed to perform the required task. Previous studies revealed that implicit processing or passive viewing of affective stimuli, induce a left amygdala response that correlates with HA. In this new study we have tried to extend these findings to the situation in which the subjects were required to explicitly process emotional stimuli.
A group of healthy female participants was asked to rate the valence of positive and negative stimuli while undergoing fMRI. Afterwards the neural responses of the participants to the positive and to the negative stimuli were separately correlated to their HA scores and compared between the low and high HA participants.
Both analyses revealed increased neural activity in the left laterobasal (LB) amygdala of the high HA participants while they were rating the positive and the negative stimuli.
Our results indicate that the left amygdala response to explicit processing of affective stimuli does correlate with HA.
Brain oscillations are increasingly the subject of electrophysiological studies probing their role in the functioning and dysfunction of the human brain. In recent years this research area has seen rapid and significant changes in the experimental approaches and analysis methods. This article reviews these developments and provides a structured overview of experimental approaches, spectral analysis techniques and methods to establish relationships between brain oscillations and behaviour. (C) 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V.
We describe for the first time the fast dynamics of functional and effective (causal) connectivity during word reading. Independent component analysis of high-density EEG recorded during a word reading task recovered multiple sources of electrical brain activity previously identified by fMRI and PET. Results confirmed the ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOT) as a central hub for word reading, showing a progression of theta-band (3-7 Hz) and gamma-band (30-50 Hz) phase synchronization and directed theta-band and gamma-band information flow with both early visual areas and high-level language-processing areas. These results highlight the interplay between local and long-distance neural dynamics involved at each stage of the reading process. Moreover, these measures of functional and causal connectivity dynamics may be used as a benchmark for comparison with clinical populations (e.g. individuals with developmental dyslexia), such that disturbances in connectivity dynamics may provide insight as to underlying neurological problems with language processing, and their potential remediation.
Human cognition is traditionally studied in experimental conditions wherein confounding complexities of the natural environment are intentionally eliminated. Thus, it remains unknown how a brain region involved in a particular experimental condition is engaged in natural conditions. Here we use electrocorticography to address this uncertainty in three participants implanted with intracranial electrodes and identify activations of neuronal populations within the intraparietal sulcus region during an experimental arithmetic condition. In a subsequent analysis, we report that the same intraparietal sulcus neural populations are activated when participants, engaged in social conversations, refer to objects with numerical content. Our prototype approach provides a means for both exploring human brain dynamics as they unfold in complex social settings and reconstructing natural experiences from recorded brain signals.
Current knowledge about the precise timing of visual input to the cortex relies largely on spike timings in monkeys and evoked-response latencies in humans. However, quantifying the activation onset does not unambiguously describe the timing of stimulus-feature-specific information processing. Here, we investigated the information content of the early human visual cortical activity by decoding low-level visual features from single-trial magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses. MEG was measured from nine healthy subjects as they viewed annular sinusoidal gratings (spanning the visual field from 2 to 10° for a duration of 1 s), characterized by spatial frequency (0.33 cycles/degree or 1.33 cycles/degree) and orientation (45° or 135°); gratings were either static or rotated clockwise or anticlockwise from 0 to 180°. Time-resolved classifiers using a 20 ms moving window exceeded chance level at 51 ms (the later edge of the window) for spatial frequency, 65 ms for orientation, and 98 ms for rotation direction. Decoding accuracies of spatial frequency and orientation peaked at 70 and 90 ms, respectively, coinciding with the peaks of the onset evoked responses. Within-subject time-insensitive pattern classifiers decoded spatial frequency and orientation simultaneously (mean accuracy 64%, chance 25%) and rotation direction (mean 82%, chance 50%). Classifiers trained on data from other subjects decoded the spatial frequency (73%), but not the orientation, nor the rotation direction. Our results indicate that unaveraged brain responses contain decodable information about low-level visual features already at the time of the earliest cortical evoked responses, and that representations of spatial frequency are highly robust across individuals.
Is there a distinct area within the human visual system that has a preferential response to numerals, as there is for faces, words, or scenes? We addressed this question using intracranial electrophysiological recordings and observed a significantly higher response in the high-frequency broadband range (high γ, 65-150 Hz) to visually presented numerals, compared with morphologically similar (i.e., letters and false fonts) or semantically and phonologically similar stimuli (i.e., number words and non-number words). Anatomically, this preferential response was consistently localized in the inferior temporal gyrus and anterior to the temporo-occipital incisure. This region lies within or close to the fMRI signal-dropout zone produced by the nearby auditory canal and venous sinus artifacts, an observation that may account for negative findings in previous fMRI studies of preferential response to numerals. Because visual numerals are culturally dependent symbols that are only learned through education, our novel finding of anatomically localized preferential response to such symbols provides a new example of acquired category-specific responses in the human visual system.
Others' gaze and emotional facial expression are important cues for the process of attention orienting. Here, we investigated with magnetoencephalography (MEG) whether the combination of averted gaze and fearful expression may elicit a selectively early effect of attention orienting on the brain responses to targets. We used the direction of gaze of centrally presented fearful and happy faces as the spatial attention orienting cue in a Posner-like paradigm where the subjects had to detect a target checkerboard presented at gazed-at (valid trials) or non gazed-at (invalid trials) locations of the screen. We showed that the combination of averted gaze and fearful expression resulted in a very early attention orienting effect in the form of additional parietal activity between 55 and 70 ms for the valid versus invalid targets following fearful gaze cues. No such effect was obtained for the targets following happy gaze cues. This early cue-target validity effect selective of fearful gaze cues involved the left superior parietal region and the left lateral middle occipital region. These findings provide the first evidence for an effect of attention orienting induced by fearful gaze in the time range of C1. In doing so, they demonstrate the selective impact of combined gaze and fearful expression cues in the process of attention orienting.
Neuroscience research indicates that moral reasoning is underpinned by distinct neural networks including the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which support communication between computational systems underlying the affective states, cognitions, and motivational processes. To characterize real time neural processing underpinning moral computations, high-density event-related potentials were measured in participants while they viewed short morally-laden visual scenarios depicting intentional and accidental harmful actions. Current source density maxima in the right pSTS as fast as 62 ms post-stimulus first distinguished intentional vs. accidental actions. Then responses in the amygdala (122 ms) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (182 ms) were evoked by the perception of harmful actions, indicative of fast information processing associated with early stages of moral cognition. Our data strongly supports the notion that intentionality is the first input to moral computations. They also indicate that emotion acts as a gain antecedent to moral judgment by alerting the individual of the moral salience of a situation, and provide evidence for the pervasive role of affect in moral sensitivity and reasoning.
Amygdala structural and functional abnormalities have been associated to reactive aggression in previous studies. However,
the possible linkage of these two types of anomalies has not been examined. We hypothesized that they would coincide in the
same localizations, would be correlated in intensity and would be mediated by reactive aggression personality traits. Here
violent (n = 25) and non-violent (n = 29) men were recruited on the basis of their reactive aggression. Callous-unemotional (CU) traits were also assessed. Gray
matter concentration (gmC) and reactivity to fearful and neutral facial expressions were measured in dorsal and ventral amygdala
partitions. The difference between responses to fearful and neutral facial expressions was calculated (F/N-difference). Violent
individuals exhibited a smaller F/N-difference and gmC in the left dorsal amygdala, where a significant coincidence was found
in a conjunction analysis. Moreover, the left amygdala F/N-difference and gmC were correlated to each other, an effect mediated
by reactive aggression but not by CU. The F/N-difference was caused by increased reactivity to neutral faces. This suggests
that anatomical anomalies within local circuitry (and not only altered input) may underlie the amygdala hyper-reactivity to
social signals which is characteristic of reactive aggression.
Morality is among the most sophisticated features of human judgement, behaviour and, ultimately, mind. An individual who behaves immorally may violate ethical rules and civil rights, and may threaten others' individual liberty, sometimes becoming violent and aggressive. In recent years, neuroscience has shown a growing interest in human morality, and has advanced our understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in moral decisions, their anatomical substrates and the neurology of abnormal moral behaviour. In this article, we review research findings that have provided a key insight into the functional and clinical neuroanatomy of the brain areas involved in normal and abnormal moral behaviour. The 'moral brain' consists of a large functional network including both cortical and subcortical anatomical structures. Because morality is a complex process, some of these brain structures share their neural circuits with those controlling other behavioural processes, such as emotions and theory of mind. Among the anatomical structures implicated in morality are the frontal, temporal and cingulate cortices. The prefrontal cortex regulates activity in subcortical emotional centres, planning and supervising moral decisions, and when its functionality is altered may lead to impulsive aggression. The temporal lobe is involved in theory of mind and its dysfunction is often implicated in violent psychopathy. The cingulate cortex mediates the conflict between the emotional and the rational components of moral reasoning. Other important structures contributing to moral behaviour include the subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Brain areas participating in moral processing can be influenced also by genetic, endocrine and environmental factors. Hormones can modulate moral behaviour through their effects on the brain. Finally, genetic polymorphisms can predispose to aggressivity and violence, arguing for a genetic-based predisposition to morality. Because abnormal moral behaviour can arise from both functional and structural brain abnormalities that should be diagnosed and treated, the neurology of moral behaviour has potential implications for clinical practice and raises ethical concerns. Last, since research has developed several neuromodulation techniques to improve brain dysfunction (deep brain stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation), knowing more about the 'moral brain' might help to develop novel therapeutic strategies for neurologically based abnormal moral behaviour.
The eye gaze of other individuals conveys important social information and can trigger multiple psychological activities; some of which, such as emotional reactions and attention orienting, occur very rapidly. Although some neuroscientific evidence has suggested that the amygdala may be involved in such rapid gaze processing, no evidence has been reported concerning the speed at which the amygdala responds to eye gaze.
To investigate this issue, we recorded electrical activity within the amygdala of six subjects using intracranial electrodes. Subjects observed images of eyes and mosaics pointing in averted and straight directions. The amygdala showed higher gamma-band oscillations for eye gaze than for mosaics, which peaked at 200 ms regardless of the direction of the gaze.
These results indicate that the human amygdala rapidly processes eye gaze.
Painful events in our environment are often accompanied by stimuli from other sensory modalities. These stimuli may influence the perception and processing of acute pain, in particular when they comprise emotional cues, like facial expressions of people surrounding us. In this whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, we examined the neuronal mechanisms underlying the influence of emotional (fearful, angry, or happy) compared to neutral facial expressions on the processing of pain in humans. Independent of their valence, subjective pain ratings for intracutaneous inputs were higher when pain stimuli were presented together with emotional facial expressions than when they were presented with a neutral facial expression. Source reconstruction using linear beamforming revealed pain-induced early (70-270 ms) oscillatory beta-band activity (BBA; 15-25 Hz) and gamma-band activity (GBA; 60-80 Hz) in the sensorimotor cortex. The presentation of faces with emotional expressions compared to faces with neutral expressions led to a stronger bilateral suppression of the pain-induced BBA, possibly reflecting enhanced response readiness of the sensorimotor system. Moreover, pain-induced GBA in the sensorimotor cortex was larger for faces expressing fear than for faces expressing anger, which might reflect the facilitation of avoidance-motivated behavior triggered by the concurrent presentation of faces with fearful expressions and painful stimuli. Thus, the presence of emotional cues, like facial expressions from people surrounding us, while receiving acute pain may facilitate neuronal processes involved in the preparation and execution of adequate protective motor responses.
Whether emotion is a source of moral judgments remains controversial. This study combined neurophysiological measures, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking, and pupillary response with behavioral measures assessing affective and moral judgments across age. One hundred and twenty-six participants aged between 4 and 37 years viewed scenarios depicting intentional versus accidental actions that caused harm/damage to people and objects. Morally, salient scenarios evoked stronger empathic sadness in young participants and were associated with enhanced activity in the amygdala, insula, and temporal poles. While intentional harm was evaluated as equally wrong across all participants, ratings of deserved punishments and malevolent intent gradually became more differentiated with age. Furthermore, age-related increase in activity was detected in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to intentional harm to people, as well as increased functional connectivity between this region and the amygdala. Our study provides evidence that moral reasoning involves a complex integration between affective and cognitive processes that gradually changes with age and can be viewed in dynamic transaction across the course of ontogenesis. The findings support the view that negative emotion alerts the individual to the moral salience of a situation by bringing discomfort and thus can serve as an antecedent to moral judgment.
A subcortical pathway through the superior colliculus and pulvinar to the amygdala is commonly assumed to mediate the non-conscious processing of affective visual stimuli. We review anatomical and physiological data that argue against the notion that such a pathway plays a prominent part in processing affective visual stimuli in humans. Instead, we propose that the primary role of the amygdala in visual processing, like that of the pulvinar, is to coordinate the function of cortical networks during evaluation of the biological significance of affective visual stimuli. Under this revised framework, the cortex has a more important role in emotion processing than is traditionally assumed.
Previous fMRI studies have reported mixed evidence for the influence of selective attention on amygdala responses to emotional stimuli, with some studies showing "automatic" emotional effects to threat-related stimuli without attention (or even without awareness), but other studies showing a gating of amygdala activity by selective attention with no response to unattended stimuli. We recorded intracranial local field potentials from the intact left lateral amygdala in a human patient prior to surgery for epilepsy and tested, with a millisecond time resolution, for neural responses to fearful faces appearing at either task-relevant or task-irrelevant locations. Our results revealed an early emotional effect in the amygdala arising prior to, and independently of, attentional modulation. However, at a later latency, we found a significant modulation of the differential emotional response when attention was directed toward or away from fearful faces. These results suggest separate influences of emotion and attention on amygdala activation and may help reconcile previous discrepancies concerning the relative responsiveness of the human amygdala to emotional and attentional factors.
A fundamental question in neuroscience concerns the relation between the spiking of individual neurons and the aggregate electrical activity of neuronal ensembles as seen in local field potentials (LFPs). Because LFPs reflect both spiking activity and subthreshold events, this question is not simply one of data aggregation. Recording from 20 neurosurgical patients, we directly examined the relation between LFPs and neuronal spiking. Examining 2030 neurons in widespread brain regions, we found that firing rates were positively correlated with broadband (2-150 Hz) shifts in the LFP power spectrum. In contrast, narrowband oscillations correlated both positively and negatively with firing rates at different recording sites. Broadband power shifts were a more reliable predictor of neuronal spiking than narrowband power shifts. These findings suggest that broadband LFP power provides valuable information concerning neuronal activity beyond that contained in narrowband oscillations.
If the amygdala is involved in shaping perceptual experience when affectively significant visual items are encountered, responses in this structure should be correlated with both visual cortex responses and behavioral reports. Here, we investigated how affective significance shapes visual perception during an attentional blink paradigm combined with aversive conditioning. Behaviorally, following aversive learning, affectively significant scenes (CS(+)) were better detected than neutral (CS(-)) ones. In terms of mean brain responses, both amygdala and visual cortical responses were stronger during CS(+) relative to CS(-) trials. Increased brain responses in these regions were associated with improved behavioral performance across participants and followed a mediation-like pattern. Importantly, the mediation pattern was observed in a trial-by-trial analysis, revealing that the specific pattern of trial-by-trial variability in brain responses was closely related to single-trial behavioral performance. Furthermore, the influence of the amygdala on visual cortical responses was consistent with a mediation, although partial, via frontal brain regions. Our results thus suggest that affective significance potentially determines the fate of a visual item during competitive interactions by enhancing sensory processing through both direct and indirect paths. In so doing, the amygdala helps separate the significant from the mundane.
Attention and Synchrony
Neural activity in the visual cortex becomes synchronized with attention and other behavioral states. However, the source of this synchrony is still unknown. Gregoriou et al. (p. 1207 ) tested the hypothesis that synchronized activity from the frontal eye field is one of the causes of the synchrony in monkey visual cortical area V4 during attention. With attention, neural activity in area V4 synchronized with frontal eye field activity when a stimulus fell in a joint receptive field, but did not do so when the fields were not overlapping.
Modern neuroscience is beginning to substantiate Darwin's notion that the roots of human morality lie in social instincts, present in several species. The role of primitive motivational-emotional systems in human morality still remains under-recognized, however. Based on recent experimental evidence and classic neuroanatomical data, we here portray a view of how "ancient" limbic-neurohumoral systems of social attachment and aversion are crucially involved in human moral behaviors, including altruism, empathic concern and aggression. Rather than being a mere evolutionary remnant of our ancestors, such limbic-neurohumoral systems are tightly integrated with cortical mechanisms to enable complex moral sentiments and values, which powerfully influence our choices in socio-cultural settings. Exploring the underlying mechanisms of human social attachment and aversion will provide new insights and foster novel experimental paradigms for the study of moral cognition and behavior.
Transient periods of synchronization of oscillating neuronal discharges in the frequency range 30-80 Hz (gamma oscillations) have been proposed to act as an integrative mechanism that may bring a widely distributed set of neurons together into a coherent ensemble that underlies a cognitive act. Results of several experiments in animals provide support for this idea. In humans, gamma oscillations have been described both on the scalp (measured by electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography) and in intracortical recordings, but no direct participation of synchrony in a cognitive task has been demonstrated so far. Here we record electrical brain activity from subjects who are viewing ambiguous visual stimuli (perceived either as faces or as meaningless shapes). We show for the first time, to our knowledge, that only face perception induces a long-distance pattern of synchronization, corresponding to the moment of perception itself and to the ensuing motor response. A period of strong desynchronization marks the transition between the moment of perception and the motor response. We suggest that this desynchronization reflects a process of active uncoupling of the underlying neural ensembles that is necessary to proceed from one cognitive state to another.
Human neuroimaging studies have suggested that subregions of the medial and lateral parietal cortex form key nodes of a larger brain network supporting episodic memory retrieval. To explore the electrophysiological correlates of functional connectivity between these subregions, we recorded simultaneously from medial and lateral parietal cortex using intracranial electrodes in three human subjects. We observed electrophysiological co-activation of retrosplenial/posterior cingulate cortex (RSC/PCC) and angular gyrus (AG) in the high-frequency broadband (HFB, or high-gamma) range, for conditions that required episodic retrieval. During resting and sleeping states, slow fluctuations (<1 Hz) of HFB activity were highly correlated between these task-co-activated neuronal populations. Furthermore, intrinsic electrophysiological connectivity patterns matched those obtained with resting-state fMRI from the same subjects. Our findings quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of parietal cortex during episodic memory retrieval and provide clear neurophysiological correlates of intrinsic and task-dependent functional connectivity in the human brain.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From an evolutionary perspective, one should be more sensitive when outgroup members attack the ingroup but less so when ingroup
or outgroup members fight among themselves. Indeed, previous behavioral and neuroimaging research demonstrated that people
show greater sensitivity for the suffering of ingroup compared with outgroup members. However, the question still remains
whether this is always the case regardless of who is the agent causing the harm. To examine the role of agency and group membership
in perception of harm, 48 participants were scanned while viewing ingroup or outgroup perpetrators intentionally harming ingroup
or outgroup members. Behavioral results showed greater moral sensitivity for ingroup versus outgroup victims, but only when
the perpetrator was from the outgroup. In support of this finding, fMRI data showed greater activity in left orbitofrontal
cortex (OFC) for ingroup victims when they were harmed by outgroup individuals. In addition, effective connectivity analyses
documented an increased coupling between left OFC and left amygdala and insula for ingroup harm, when the perpetrator was
from the outgroup. Together these results indicate that we are highly sensitive to harm perpetrated by outgroup members and
that increased sensitivity for ingroup victims is dependent on who is the agent of the action.
Determining the appropriate punishment for a norm violation requires consideration of both the perpetrator's state of mind (for example, purposeful or blameless) and the strong emotions elicited by the harm caused by their actions. It has been hypothesized that such affective responses serve as a heuristic that determines appropriate punishment. However, an actor's mental state often trumps the effect of emotions, as unintended harms may go unpunished, regardless of their magnitude. Using fMRI, we found that emotionally graphic descriptions of harmful acts amplify punishment severity, boost amygdala activity and strengthen amygdala connectivity with lateral prefrontal regions involved in punishment decision-making. However, this was only observed when the actor's harm was intentional; when harm was unintended, a temporoparietal-medial-prefrontal circuit suppressed amygdala activity and the effect of graphic descriptions on punishment was abolished. These results reveal the brain mechanisms by which evaluation of a transgressor's mental state gates our emotional urges to punish.
Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is known to be involved in functions such as emotion, pain, and cognitive control. While studies in humans and nonhuman mammals have advanced our understanding of ACC function, the subjective correlates of ACC activity have remained largely unexplored. In the current study, we show that electrical charge delivery in the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) elicits autonomic changes and the expectation of an imminent challenge coupled with a determined attitude to overcome it. Seed-based, resting-state connectivity analysis revealed that the site of stimulation in both patients was at the core of a large-scale distributed network linking aMCC to the frontoinsular and frontopolar as well as some subcortical regions. This report provides compelling, first-person accounts of electrical stimulation of this brain network and suggests its possible involvement in psychopathological conditions that are characterized by a reduced capacity to endure psychological or physical distress.
Exploration of neural sources and their effective connectivity based on transient changes in electrophysiological activities to external stimuli is important for understanding brain mechanisms of sensory information processing. However, such cortical mechanisms have not yet been well characterized in electrophysiological studies since (1) it is difficult to estimate the stimulus-activated neural sources and their activities and (2) it is difficult to identify transient effective connectivity between neural sources in the order of milliseconds. To address these issues, we developed a time-varying source connectivity approach to effectively capture fast-changing information flows between neural sources from high-density Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. This time-varying source connectivity approach was applied to somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs), which were elicited by electrical stimulation of right hand and recorded using 64 channels from 16 subjects, to reveal human somatosensory information processing. First, SEP sources and their activities were estimated, both at single-subject and group level, using equivalent current dipolar source modeling. Then, the functional integration among SEP sources was explored using a Kalman smoother based time-varying effective connectivity inference method. The results showed that SEPs were mainly generated from the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex (SI), bilateral secondary somatosensory cortex (SII), and cingulate cortex (CC). Importantly, we observed a serial processing of somatosensory information in human somatosensory cortices (from SI to SII) at earlier latencies (<150 ms) and a reciprocal processing between SII and CC at later latencies (>200 ms).
Language and action systems are functionally coupled in the brain as demonstrated by converging evidence using Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and lesion studies. In particular, this coupling has been demonstrated using the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) in which motor activity and language interact. The ACE task requires participants to listen to sentences that described actions typically performed with an open hand (e.g., clapping), a closed hand (e.g., hammering), or without any hand action (neutral); and to press a large button with either an open hand position or closed hand position immediately upon comprehending each sentence. The ACE is defined as a longer reaction time (RT) in the action-sentence incompatible conditions than in the compatible conditions. Here we investigated direct motor-language coupling in two novel and uniquely informative ways. First, we measured the behavioural ACE in patients with motor impairment (early Parkinson's disease - EPD), and second, in epileptic patients with direct electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings. In experiment 1, EPD participants with preserved general cognitive repertoire, showed a much diminished ACE relative to non-EPD volunteers. Moreover, a correlation between ACE performance and action-verb processing (kissing and dancing test - KDT) was observed. Direct cortical recordings (ECoG) in motor and language areas (experiment 2) demonstrated simultaneous bidirectional effects: motor preparation affected language processing (N400 at left inferior frontal gyrus and middle/superior temporal gyrus), and language processing affected activity in movement-related areas (motor potential at premotor and M1). Our findings show that the ACE paradigm requires ongoing integration of preserved motor and language coupling (abolished in EPD) and engages motor-temporal cortices in a bidirectional way. In addition, both experiments suggest the presence of a motor-language network which is not restricted to somatotopically defined brain areas. These results open new pathways in the fields of motor diseases, theoretical approaches to language understanding, and models of action-perception coupling.
Sexual sadism is a psychiatric disorder in which sexual pleasure is derived from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others. While the psychological and forensic aspects of sexual sadism have been well characterized, little is known about the neurocognitive circuitry associated with the disorder. Sexual sadists show increased peripheral sexual arousal when observing other individuals in pain. The neural mechanisms underlying this unusual response are not well understood. We predicted that sadists relative to nonsadists would show increased responses in brain regions associated with sexual arousal (amygdala, hypothalamus, and ventral striatum) and affective pain processing (anterior cingulate and anterior insula) during pain observation.
To study the neural correlates of pain observation in sadists and nonsadists.
Case-control cross-sectional study. Sadists and nonsadists viewed 50 social scenes, 25 that depicted a person in pain (eg, one person stabbing another person's hand with scissors) and 25 thematically matched no-pain pictures (eg, one person stabbing a table with scissors, with another person's hand nearby). Pain severity ratings (range, 0 [none] to 4 [severe]) were acquired following each picture presentation.
Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center, Mauston, Wisconsin.
Fifteen violent sexual offenders, including 8 sadists and 7 nonsadists (defined using the Severe Sexual Sadism Scale) who were matched for age, IQ, and education.
Hemodynamic response revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging and pain severity ratings.
Sadists relative to nonsadists showed greater amygdala activation when viewing pain pictures. They also rated pain pictures higher on pain severity than nonsadists. Sadists but not nonsadists showed a positive correlation between pain severity ratings and activity in the anterior insula.
These results provide neurobehavioral evidence of unusually heightened sensitivity to the pain of others in sadists.
We present the response pattern of intracranial event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded from depth-electrodes in the human amygdala (four patients) to faces or face parts encoding fearful, happy or neutral expressions. The amygdala showed increased amplitude ERPs (from 200 to 400 ms post-stimulus) in response to the eye region of the face compared to whole faces and to the mouth region. In particular, a strong emotional valence effect was observed, both at group and at single-subject level, with a preferential response to fearful eyes respect to every other stimulus category from 200 to 400 ms after stimulus presentation. A preferential response to smiling eyes compared to happy faces and smiling mouths was also observed at group level from 300 to 400 ms post-stimulus presentation. A complementary time-frequency analysis was performed showing that an increase in the theta frequency band (4-7 Hz) accounted for the main event-related band power (ERBP) change during the 200-500 ms post stimulus interval. The analysis of the ERBPs changes according to their emotional valence showed a strong increase in theta ERBP to fearful eyes, which was higher respect to any other facial stimulus. Moreover, theta ERBP increase to "smiling eyes" was larger respect with that evoked by smiling mouths and whole happy faces. Minimal post-stimulus ERBPs changes were evoked by neutral stimuli. These data are consistent with a special role of the amygdala in processing facial signals, both with negative and positive valence, conveyed by the eye region of the face.
To explore in human potential hippocampal projections within and outside the temporal lobe.
We performed intra-cerebral electrical stimulations in seven patients investigated by depth electrodes for refractory epilepsy and analyzed the presence of evoked potentials (EPs) in all brain regions explored. Bipolar electrical stimulations, consisting of two series of 25 pulses of 1 ms duration, 0.2 Hz frequency, and 3 mA intensity, were delivered in a total of 36 hippocampal stimulations sites.
Reproducible EPs were recorded in several brain regions with variable latencies, amplitudes and morphologies. Within the temporal lobe, EPs were present in the amygdala, entorhinal cortex, temporal pole and temporal neocortex. EPs were also observed in the frontal lobe, anterior cingulate gyrus and orbito-frontal cortex, midcingulate and posterior cingulate gyrus, insula and thalamic pulvinar nucleus.
Our results demonstrate a large distribution of direct or indirect hippocampal projections.
This widespread connectivity supports the previous definition of different networks involved mainly in memory and behavioral processes, implicating the temporal lobe, the cingulate gyrus or the prefrontal region. Our data provide some clues to further evaluate potential pathways of propagation of mesial temporal lobe seizure, via the insula or the pulvinar nucleus.
We synthesize the contrasting predictions of motor simulation and teleological theories of action comprehension and present evidence from a series of studies showing that monkeys and apes-like humans-extract the meaning of an event by (a) going beyond the surface appearance of actions, attributing goals and intentions to the agent; (b) using details about the environment to infer when an action is rational or irrational; (c) making predictions about an agent's goal and the most probable action to obtain the goal, within the constraints of the situation; (d) predicting the most probable outcome of actions even when they are physiologically incapable of producing the actions; and (e) combining information about means and outcomes to make decisions about social interactions, some with moral relevance. These studies reveal the limitations of motor simulation theories, especially those that rely on the notion of direct matching and mirror neuron activation. They provide support, however, for a teleological theory, rooted in an inferential process that extracts information about action means, potential goals, and the environmental constraints that limit rational action.
Studying of the impact of social context on the perception of pain in others is important for understanding the role of intentionality in interpersonal sensitivity, empathy, and implicit moral reasoning. Here we used an event-related fMRI with pain and social context (i.e., the number of individuals in the stimuli) as the two factors to investigate how different social contexts and resulting perceived agency modulate the neural response to the perception of pain in others. Twenty-six healthy participants were scanned while presented with short dynamic visual stimuli depicting painful situations accidentally caused by or intentionally caused by another individual. The main effect of perception of pain was associated with signal increase in the aMCC, insula, somatosensory cortex, SMA and PAG. Importantly, perceiving the presence of another individual led to specific hemodynamic increase in regions involved in representing social interaction and emotion regulation including the temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and orbitofrontal cortex. Furthermore, the functional connectivity pattern between the left amygdala and other brain areas was modulated by the perceived agency. Our study demonstrates that the social context in which pain occurs modulate the brain response to other's pain. This modulation may reflect successful adaptation to potential danger present in a social interaction. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underpinning implicit moral reasoning that concern actions that can harm other people.
A rapid response to environmental threat is highly adaptive and fearful facial expressions serve as important threat cues. The biological significance of these threat cues is demonstrated by neuroimaging findings of amygdala responses to backward masked fearful faces. Additionally, behavioral dot-probe studies reveal that backward masked fearful faces modulate spatial attention. However, little is known about the behavioral impact of the amygdala sensitivity to masked fearful faces. Using a dot-probe task with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we provide the first evidence that the amygdala is involved in orienting to backward masked fearful faces. Furthermore, this spatial attention-related amygdala response was correlated with activity in the anterior cingulate, superior temporal sulcus, and lingual gyrus.
Using functional neuroimaging techniques (PET and fMRI), various cortical, limbic, and paralimbic structures have been identified in the last decade as neural substrates of human emotion. In this study we used a novel approach (intracerebral recordings of event-related potentials) to add to our knowledge of specific brain regions involved in affective picture processing. Ten intractable epileptic patients undergoing pre-surgical depth electrode recording viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures and intracerebral event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. A total of 752 cortical and subcortical sites were investigated. Significant differences in ERPs to unpleasant as compared to neutral or pleasant pictures were frequently and consistently observed in recordings from various brain areas--the mesial temporal cortex (the amygdala, the hippocampus, the temporal pole), the lateral temporal cortex, the mesial prefrontal cortex (ACC and the medial frontal gyrus), and the lateral prefrontal cortex. Interestingly, the mean latencies of responses to emotional stimuli were somewhat shorter in the frontal lobe structures (with evidently earlier activation within lateral prefrontal areas when compared to mesial prefrontal cortex) and longer in the temporal lobe regions. These differences, however, were not significant. Additional clearly positive findings were observed in some rarely investigated regions--in the posterior parietal cortex, the precuneus, and the insula. An approximately equivalent number of positive findings was revealed in the left and right hemisphere structures. These results are in agreement with a multisystem model of human emotion, distributed far beyond the typical limbic system and substantially comprising lateral aspects of both frontal lobes as well.
Recent work in the cognitive and neurobiological sciences indicates an important relationship between emotion and moral judgment. Based on this evidence, several researchers have argued that emotions are the source of our intuitive moral judgments. However, despite the richness of the correlational data between emotion and morality, we argue that the current neurological, behavioral, developmental and evolutionary evidence is insufficient to demonstrate that emotion is necessary for making moral judgments. We suggest instead, that the source of moral judgments lies in our causal-intentional psychology; emotion often follows from these judgments, serving a primary role in motivating morally relevant action.
Adaptive beamformer analyses of magnetoencephalograms (MEG) have shown promise as a method for functional imaging of cortical processes. Although recent evidence is encouraging, it is unclear whether these methods can both localize and reconstruct the time course of activity in subcortical structures such as the amygdala. Fourteen healthy participants (7 women) performed a perceptual matching task of negative emotional faces (angry and fearful) and geometric shapes that was designed for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to maximize amygdala activation. Neuromagnetic data were collected with a 275-channel whole-head magnetometer, and event-related adaptive beamformer analyses were conducted to estimate broadband evoked responses to faces and shapes across the whole brain in 7 mm steps. Group analyses revealed greater left amygdala activity to faces over shapes, both when face-matching and shape-matching trials were presented in separate blocks and when they were randomly intermixed. This finding was replicated in a second experiment with 7 new participants (3 women). Virtual sensor time series showed clear evoked responses in the left amygdala and left fusiform gyrus in both runs and experiments. We conclude that amygdala activity can be resolved from MEGs with adaptive beamformers with temporal resolution superior to other neuroimaging modalities. This demonstration should encourage the use of MEG for elucidating functional networks mediating fear-related neural phenomena that likely unfold rapidly in time across cortical and subcortical structures.
1. The activity of single neurons was recorded extracellularly from the monkey amygdala while monkeys performed a visual discrimination task. The monkeys were trained to remember a visual stimulus during a delay period (0.5-3.0 s), to discriminate a new visual stimulus from the stimulus, and to release a lever when the new stimulus was presented. Colored photographs (human faces, monkeys, foods, and nonfood objects) or computer-generated two-dimensional shapes (a yellow triangle, a red circle, etc.) were used as visual stimuli. 2. The activity of 160 task-related neurons was studied. Of these, 144 (90%) responded to visual stimuli, 13 (8%) showed firing during the delay period, and 9 (6%) responded to the reward. 3. Task-related neurons were categorized according to the way in which various stimuli activated the neurons. First, to evaluate the proportion of all tested stimuli that elicited changes in activity of a neuron, selectivity index 1 (SI1) was employed. Second, to evaluate the ability of a neuron to discriminate a stimulus from another stimulus, SI2 was employed. On the basis of the calculated values of SI1 and SI2, neurons were classified as selective and nonselective. Most visual neurons were categorized as selective (131/144), and a few were characterized as nonselective (13/144). Neurons active during the delay period were also categorized as selective visual and delay neurons (6/13) and as nonselective delay neurons (7/13). 4. Responses of selective visual neurons had various temporal and stimulus-selective properties. Latencies ranged widely from 60 to 300 ms. Response durations also ranged widely from 20 to 870 ms. When the natures of the various effective stimuli were studied for each neuron, one-fourth of the responses of these neurons were considered to reflect some categorical aspect of the stimuli, such as human, monkey, food, or nonfood object. Furthermore, the responses of some neurons apparently reflected a certain behavioral significance of the stimuli that was separate from the task, such as the face of a particular person, smiling human faces, etc. 5. Nonselective visual neurons responded to a visual stimulus, regardless of its nature. They also responded in the absence of a visual stimulus when the monkey anticipated the appearance of the next stimulus. 6. Selective visual and delay neurons fired in response to particular stimuli and throughout the subsequent delay periods. Nonselective delay neurons increased their discharge rates gradually during the delay period, and the discharge rate decreased after the next stimulus was presented. 7. Task-related neurons were identified in six histologically distinct nuclei of the amygdala.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
To investigate the functions of the amygdala in visual information processing and in emotional and social responses, recordings were made from single neurons in the amygdala of the monkey. A population of neurons (40 of more than 1000 recorded in 4 monkeys) was investigated which responded primarily to faces. These neurons typically (1) responded to some human or monkey faces, which were presented to the monkey through a large aperture shutter so that response latencies could be measured, or were simply shown to the monkey, (2) responded to 2-dimensional representations of these faces, as well as to real 3-dimensional faces, (3) had no responses or only small (less than half maximum) responses to gratings, simple geometrical, other complex 3-D stimuli, or to arousing and aversive stimuli, (4) had response latencies of 110-200 ms, (5) were located in the basal accessory nucleus of the amygdala, (6) responded differently to different faces, as shown by measures of d', and could thus over a population of such neurons code information useful for making different responses to different individuals, (7) could in some cases (9/11 tested) respond to parts of faces, and (8) in a few cases (4/19 tested) responded more to a face which produced an emotional response. A comparison made in three monkeys of the responses of these neurons with the responses of 77 neurons with face-selective responses recorded in the cortex of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) showed that the amygdaloid neurons had longer response latencies (110-200 compared to 90-140 ms), and were in some respects more selective in their responses to different faces. It is suggested that the deficits in social and emotional behavior produced by amygdala lesions could be due in part to damage to a neuronal system specialized in utilizing information from faces so that appropriate social and emotional responses can be made to different individuals.