Social support modulates the neural correlates underlying social exclusion.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Morese R
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6688450 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:This functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural correlates of punishment and forgiveness of initiators of social exclusion (i.e. 'excluders'). Participants divided money in a modified Dictator Game between themselves and people who previously either included or excluded them during a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball). Participants selectively punished the excluders by decreasing their outcomes; even when this required participants to give up monetary rewards. Punishment of excluders was associated with increased activation in the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and bilateral anterior insula. Costly punishment was accompanied by higher activity in the pre-SMA compared with punishment that resulted in gains or was non-costly. Refraining from punishment (i.e. forgiveness) was associated with self-reported perspective-taking and increased activation in the bilateral temporoparietal junction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings show that social exclusion can result in punishment as well as forgiveness of excluders and that separable neural networks implicated in social cognition and cognitive control are recruited when people choose either to punish or to forgive those who excluded them.
| S-EPMC4321620 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent work has demonstrated that reminders of those we are closest to have a unique combination of effects on fear learning and represent a new category of fear inhibitors, termed prepared fear suppressors. Notably, social-support-figure images have been shown to resist becoming associated with fear, suppress conditional-fear-responding and lead to long-term fear reduction. Due to the novelty of this category, understanding the underlying neural mechanisms that support these unique abilities of social-support-reminders has yet to be investigated. Here, we examined the neural correlates that enable social-support-reminders to resist becoming associated with fear during a retardation-of-acquisition test. We found that social-support-figure-images (vs stranger-images) were less readily associated with fear, replicating prior work, and that this effect was associated with decreased amygdala activity and increased ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) activity for social-support-figure-images (vs stranger-images), suggesting that social-support-engagement of the VMPFC and consequent inhibition of the amygdala may contribute to unique their inhibitory effects. Connectivity analyses supported this interpretation, showing greater connectivity between the VMPFC and left amygdala for social-support-figure-images (vs stranger-images).
| S-EPMC10868130 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Social exclusion and risk-taking are both common experiences of concern in adolescence, yet little is known about how the two may be related at behavioral or neural levels. In this fMRI study, adolescents (N=27, 14 male, 14-17years-old) completed a series of tasks in the scanner assessing risky decision-making before and after an episode of social exclusion. In this particular context, exclusion was associated with greater behavioral risk-taking among adolescents with low self-reported resistance to peer influence (RPI). When making risky decisions after social exclusion, adolescents who had lower RPI exhibited higher levels of activity in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), and this response in rTPJ was a significant mediator of the relationship between RPI and greater risk-taking after social exclusion. Lower RPI was also associated with lower levels of activity in lPFC during crashes following social exclusion, but unlike rTPJ this response in lPFC was not a significant mediator of the relationship between RPI and greater risk-taking after social exclusion. The results suggest that mentalizing and/or attentional mechanisms have a unique direct effect on adolescents' vulnerability to peer influence on risk-taking.
| S-EPMC3820094 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Social belonging is an important human drive that influences mood and behavior. Neural responses to social exclusion are well-characterized, but the specificity of these responses to processing rejection-related affective distress is unknown. The present study compares neural responses to exclusion and overinclusion, a condition that similarly violates fairness expectations but does not involve rejection, with a focus on implications for models of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI) function. In an fMRI adaptation of the Cyberball paradigm with adolescents aged 11.1-17.7 years (N = 69), we employed parametric modulators to examine scaling of neural signal with cumulative exclusion and inclusion events, an approach that overcomes arbitrary definitions of condition onsets/offsets imposed on fluid, continuous gameplay. We identified positive scaling of dACC and posterior insula response with cumulative exclusion events, but these same regions exhibited trending signal decreases with cumulative inclusion events. Furthermore, areas within the dACC and insula also responded to context incongruency (throws to the participant in the exclusion run; throws between computer players in the overinclusion run). These findings caution against interpretations that responses in these regions uniquely reflect the affective distress of exclusion within social interaction paradigms. We further identified that the left ventrolateral PFC, rostromedial PFC, and left intraparietal sulcus responded similarly to cumulative exclusion and inclusion. These findings shed light on which neural regions exhibit patterns of differential sensitivity to exclusion or overinclusion, as well as those that are more broadly engaged by both types of social interaction.
| S-EPMC7338003 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Given the recent surge in functional neuroimaging studies on social exclusion, the current study employed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) based meta-analyses to identify brain regions that have consistently been implicated across different experimental paradigms used to investigate exclusion. We also examined the neural correlates underlying Cyberball, the most commonly used paradigm to study exclusion, as well as differences in exclusion-related activation between developing (7-18 years of age, from pre-adolescence up to late adolescence) and emerging adult (broadly defined as undergraduates, including late adolescence and young adulthood) samples. Results revealed involvement of the bilateral medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, right precuneus and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex across the different paradigms used to examine social exclusion; similar activation patterns were identified when restricting the analysis to Cyberball studies. Investigations into age-related effects revealed that ventrolateral prefrontal activations identified in the full sample were driven by (i.e. present in) developmental samples, while medial prefrontal activations were driven by emerging adult samples. In addition, the right ventral striatum was implicated in exclusion, but only in developmental samples. Subtraction analysis revealed significantly greater activation likelihood in striatal and ventrolateral prefrontal clusters in the developmental samples as compared to emerging adults, though the opposite contrast failed to identify any significant regions. Findings integrate the knowledge accrued from functional neuroimaging studies on social exclusion to date, highlighting involvement of lateral prefrontal regions implicated in regulation and midline structures involved in social cognitive and self-evaluative processes across experimental paradigms and ages, as well as limbic structures in developing samples specifically.
| S-EPMC5457721 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Micrographia is a common symptom in Parkinson's disease, which manifests as either a consistent or progressive reduction in the size of handwriting or both. Neural correlates underlying micrographia remain unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate micrographia-related neural activity and connectivity modulations. In addition, the effect of attention and dopaminergic administration on micrographia was examined. We found that consistent micrographia was associated with decreased activity and connectivity in the basal ganglia motor circuit; while progressive micrographia was related to the dysfunction of basal ganglia motor circuit together with disconnections between the rostral supplementary motor area, rostral cingulate motor area and cerebellum. Attention significantly improved both consistent and progressive micrographia, accompanied by recruitment of anterior putamen and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Levodopa improved consistent micrographia accompanied by increased activity and connectivity in the basal ganglia motor circuit, but had no effect on progressive micrographia. Our findings suggest that consistent micrographia is related to dysfunction of the basal ganglia motor circuit; while dysfunction of the basal ganglia motor circuit and disconnection between the rostral supplementary motor area, rostral cingulate motor area and cerebellum likely contributes to progressive micrographia. Attention improves both types of micrographia by recruiting additional brain networks. Levodopa improves consistent micrographia by restoring the function of the basal ganglia motor circuit, but does not improve progressive micrographia, probably because of failure to repair the disconnected networks.
| S-EPMC4719707 | biostudies-other
Project description:Social exclusion is an influential concept in politics, mental health and social psychology. Studies on healthy subjects have implicated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a region involved in emotional and social information processing, in neural responses to social exclusion. Impairments in social interactions are common in schizophrenia and are associated with reduced quality of life. Core symptoms such as delusions usually have a social content. However little is known about the neural underpinnings of social abnormalities. The aim of this study was to investigate the neural substrates of social exclusion in schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls underwent fMRI while participating in a popular social exclusion paradigm. This task involves passing a 'ball' between the participant and two cartoon representations of other subjects. The extent of social exclusion (ball not being passed to the participant) was parametrically varied throughout the task. Replicating previous findings, increasing social exclusion activated the mPFC in controls. In contrast, patients with schizophrenia failed to modulate mPFC responses with increasing exclusion. Furthermore, the blunted response to exclusion correlated with increased severity of positive symptoms. These data support the hypothesis that the neural response to social exclusion differs in schizophrenia, highlighting the mPFC as a potential substrate of impaired social interactions.
| S-EPMC3420898 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Threatening faces are potent cues in social anxiety disorder (SAD); therefore, neural response to threatening faces, particularly regions in the "fear" circuit such as amygdala, may classify individuals with SAD. Previous studies of indirect/implicit processing of threatening faces have shown that support vector machine (SVM) pattern recognition significantly differentiates individuals with SAD from healthy participants, though evidence for the role of the fear circuit in classification has been inconsistent. We extend this literature by using SVM during direct face processing. Individuals with SAD (n=47) and healthy controls (n=46) completed a validated emotional face matching task during functional MRI, which included a matching shapes control condition. SVM was based on brain response to threat (vs. happy) faces, threat faces (vs. shapes), and threat/happy faces (vs. shapes) in 90 regions encompassing frontal, limbic, parietal, temporal, and occipital systems. Recursive feature elimination (RFE) was used for feature selection and to rank the contribution of regions in predicting SAD diagnosis. SVM results for threat (vs. happy) faces revealed satisfactory accuracy (e.g., area under the curve=0.72); results with shapes as "baseline" yielded less optimal classification. RFE for threat (vs. happy) indicated that all 90 brain regions were necessary for classification. RFE-based ranking suggested diffuse neurofunctional activation to threat (vs. happy) faces in classification. When using an RFE cut-point, regions implicated in sensory and goal-directed processes contributed relatively more in differentiating SAD from controls than other regions. Results suggest that neural activity across large-scale systems, as opposed to fear circuitry alone, may aid in the diagnosis of SAD.
| S-EPMC7082922 | biostudies-literature
Project description:PurposeSocial influence is prominent across the lifespan, but sensitivity to influence is especially high during adolescence and is often associated with increased risk taking. Such risk taking can have dire consequences. For example, in American adolescents, traffic-related crashes are leading causes of nonfatal injury and death. Neural measures may be especially useful in understanding the basic mechanisms of adolescents' vulnerability to peer influence.MethodsWe examined neural responses to social exclusion as potential predictors of risk taking in the presence of peers in recently licensed adolescent drivers. Risk taking was assessed in a driving simulator session occurring approximately 1 week after the neuroimaging session.ResultsIncreased activity in neural systems associated with the distress of social exclusion and mentalizing during an exclusion episode predicted increased risk taking in the presence of a peer (controlling for solo risk behavior) during a driving simulator session outside the neuroimaging laboratory 1 week later. These neural measures predicted risky driving behavior above and beyond self-reports of susceptibility to peer pressure and distress during exclusion.ConclusionsThese results address the neural bases of social influence and risk taking; contribute to our understanding of social and emotional function in the adolescent brain; and link neural activity in specific, hypothesized, regions to risk-relevant outcomes beyond the neuroimaging laboratory. Results of this investigation are discussed in terms of the mechanisms underlying risk taking in adolescents and the public health implications for adolescent driving.
| S-EPMC4144831 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Many studies have investigated how exclusion affects cognitive control and have reported inconsistent results. However, these studies usually treated cognitive control as a unitary concept, whereas it actually involved two main sub-processes: conflict detection and response implementation. Furthermore, existing studies have focused primarily on exclusion's effects on conscious cognitive control, while recent studies have shown the existence of unconscious cognitive control. Therefore, the present study investigated whether and how exclusion affects the sub-processes underlying conscious and unconscious cognitive control differently. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion and participants subsequently performed a masked Go/No-Go task during which event-related potentials were measured. For conscious cognitive control, excluded participants showed a larger N2 but smaller P3 effects than included participants, suggesting that excluded people invest more attention in conscious conflict detection, but less in conscious inhibition of impulsive responses. However, for unconscious cognitive control, excluded participants showed a smaller N2 but larger P3 effects than included participants, suggesting that excluded people invest less attention in unconscious conflict detection, but more in unconscious inhibition of impulsive responses. Together, these results suggest that exclusion causes people to rebalance attention allocation priorities for cognitive control according to a more flexible and adaptive strategy.
| S-EPMC4980633 | biostudies-literature