Dataset Information

Neural Population Decoding Reveals the Intrinsic Positivity of the Self.

ABSTRACT: People are motivated to hold favorable views of themselves, which manifests as a positivity bias when evaluating their own performance and abilities. However, it remains an open question whether positive affect is an essential component of people's self-concept. Prior functional neuroimaging research demonstrated that similar regions of the brain support positive affect and self-referential processing, although a direct test of their shared representation has yet to be examined. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging in conjunction with multivariate pattern analysis in a cross-domain neural population decoding paradigm. We found that a multivariate pattern classifier model trained to dissociate neural responses to viewing positively and negatively valenced images can dissociate thinking about oneself from a close friend during a lexical trait-judgment task commonly used in the study of self-referential processing. Cross-domain classification accuracy was found to be highest in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), a region previously implicated in both self-referential processing and positive affect. These results show that brain responses during self-referential processing can be decoded from multi-voxel activation patterns in the vMPFC when viewing positively valenced material, thereby providing evidence that positive affect may be a central component of the mental representation of the self.

SUBMITTER: Chavez RS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6075222 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Neural Population Decoding Reveals the Intrinsic Positivity of the Self.

Chavez Robert S RS Heatherton Todd F TF Wagner Dylan D DD

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) 20171101 11

People are motivated to hold favorable views of themselves, which manifests as a positivity bias when evaluating their own performance and abilities. However, it remains an open question whether positive affect is an essential component of people's self-concept. Prior functional neuroimaging research demonstrated that similar regions of the brain support positive affect and self-referential processing, although a direct test of their shared representation has yet to be examined. Here we use func ...[more]

PMID: 27664966

Similar Datasets

Project description:Material properties, such as softness or stickiness, determine how an object can be used. Based on our real-life experience, we form strong expectations about how objects should behave under force, given their typical material properties. Such expectations have been shown to modulate perceptual processes, but we currently do not know how expectation influences the temporal dynamics of the cortical visual analysis for objects and their materials. Here, we tracked the neural representations of expected and unexpected material behaviors using time-resolved EEG decoding in a violation-of-expectation paradigm, where objects fell to the ground and deformed in expected or unexpected ways. Participants were 25 men and women. Our study yielded three key results: First, both objects and materials were represented rapidly and in a temporally sustained fashion. Second, objects exhibiting unexpected material behaviors were more successfully decoded than objects exhibiting expected behaviors within 190 ms after the impact, which might indicate additional processing demands when expectations are unmet. Third, general signals of expectation fulfillment that generalize across specific objects and materials were found within the first 150 ms after the impact. Together, our results provide new insights into the temporal neural processing cascade that underlies the analysis of real-world material behaviors. They reveal a sequence of predictions, with cortical signals progressing from a general signature of expectation fulfillment toward increased processing of unexpected material behaviors.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In the real world, we can make accurate predictions about how an object's material shapes its behavior: For instance, we know that cups are typically made of porcelain and shatter when we accidentally drop them. Here, we use EEG to experimentally test how expectations about material behaviors impact neural processing. We showed our participants videos of objects that exhibited expected material behaviors (e.g., a glass shattering when falling to the ground) or unexpected material behaviors (e.g., a glass melting on impact). Our results reveal a hierarchy of predictions in cortex: The visual system rapidly generates signals that index whether expectations about material behaviors are met. These signals are followed by increased processing of objects displaying unexpected material behaviors.

Project description:Auditory signals arrive at the ear as a mixture that the brain must decompose into distinct sources based to a large extent on acoustic properties of the sounds. An important question concerns whether listeners have voluntary control over how many sources they perceive. This has been studied using pure high (H) and low (L) tones presented in the repeating pattern HLH-HLH-, which can form a bistable percept heard either as an integrated whole (HLH-) or as segregated into high (H-H-) and low (-L-) sequences. Although instructing listeners to try to integrate or segregate sounds affects reports of what they hear, this could reflect a response bias rather than a perceptual effect. We had human listeners (15 males, 12 females) continuously report their perception of such sequences and recorded neural activity using MEG. During neutral listening, a classifier trained on patterns of neural activity distinguished between periods of integrated and segregated perception. In other conditions, participants tried to influence their perception by allocating attention either to the whole sequence or to a subset of the sounds. They reported hearing the desired percept for a greater proportion of time than when listening neutrally. Critically, neural activity supported these reports; stimulus-locked brain responses in auditory cortex were more likely to resemble the signature of segregation when participants tried to hear segregation than when attempting to perceive integration. These results indicate that listeners can influence how many sound sources they perceive, as reflected in neural responses that track both the input and its perceptual organization.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Can we consciously influence our perception of the external world? We address this question using sound sequences that can be heard either as coming from a single source or as two distinct auditory streams. Listeners reported spontaneous changes in their perception between these two interpretations while we recorded neural activity to identify signatures of such integration and segregation. They also indicated that they could, to some extent, choose between these alternatives. This claim was supported by corresponding changes in responses in auditory cortex. By linking neural and behavioral correlates of perception, we demonstrate that the number of objects that we perceive can depend not only on the physical attributes of our environment, but also on how we intend to experience it.

Dataset Information

Neural Population Decoding Reveals the Intrinsic Positivity of the Self.

Publications

Neural Population Decoding Reveals the Intrinsic Positivity of the Self.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets